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HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. 



HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS; 

3,'f 



OR. 



IjUmfe anfo fwiltrmts 



IN SEARCH OF 



ALPINE PLANTS. 



" Alpenblumen frdhlich bliihend, 
Oh, wie riihrt mich eure Milde, 
Dass ihr schmuckt so farbengliihend 
Diese steinem harte Wilde." 



STOBER. 



BY THE 



REV. HUGH MACMILLAN, LL.D., F.R.S.E. 

AUTHOR OF "BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE," 
" THE TRUE VINE," " THE MINISTRY OF NATUREj" ETC. 



SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. 

flatten 

MACMILLAN AND CO. 
1873- 

[ All rights reserved ] 















OXFORD: 

BY E. B. GARDNER, E. PICKARX> HALL, AND J. H. STACY, 

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



WITHDRAVVN 

MAY 9 1919 

PUB VIC LIBRARY 
WASJULtfGKTQN, - 

.-rs ■ < 1/ ' V w L_J 1 



PRE 




COND 



The following chapters may be regarded as 
popular studies in geographical botany. Although 
each is separate and distinct, they have all a 
common basis and bond of unity. Their aim is 
to impart a general idea of the origin, character, 
and distribution of those rare and beautiful Alpine 
plants which occur on the British hills, and which 
are found almost everywhere in Europe, Asia, 
Africa, and America, wherever there are mountain 
chains sufficiently lofty to furnish them with a 
suitable climate. In the first three chapters, the 
peculiar vegetation of the Highland mountains is 
fully described ; while in the remaining chapters 
this vegetation is traced to its northern cradle in 
the mountains of Norway, and to its southern 
European termination in the Alps of Switzerland 
All the excursions mentioned were made during 
intervals of relaxation from professional work 



vi PREFACE. 



extending over several summers. Instead of con- 
veying the information I have to give regarding 
the plants gathered on these occasions, in technical 
language, in a formal treatise, I thought it better 
that it should appear in a setting of personal 
adventure, and be associated with descriptions of 
the natural scenery and the peculiarities of the 
hurrtan life in the midst of which the plants were 
found. By this method of treatment the subject 
will perhaps be made more interesting to a larger 
circle of readers. 

In this new edition I have completed the journal 
of my tour in Norway, which broke off abruptly 
and was left unfinished in the last ; and incor- 
porated in that chapter, as well as in the first, a 
large amount of additional information regarding 
the distribution of British and Norwegian plants, 
and the geological changes connected with them. 
Several interesting and important facts borrowed 
from classic story, and from the records of zoology 
and geology, throwing light upon these changes, 
have also been given. In this way no less than 
seventy-four pages of new matter have been added. 
The whole work has been thoroughly revised, and 
it is hoped greatly improved. 

H. M. 

June, 1873. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER I. 

PAGE. 

THE PLANTS ON THE SUMMITS OF THE HIGHLAND 

MOUNTAINS ....... I 

CHAPTER II. 

THE INTERMEDIATE OR HEATHER REGION . . 87 

CHAPTER III. 
A GARDEN WALL IN A HIGHLAND GLEN . . . 12 s 



CHAPTER . IV. 

A RAMBLE THROUGH NORWAY, THE CRADLE OF THE 

HIGHLAND FLORA 1 6=; 



CHAPTER V. 
THE SKJEGGEDAL-FOSS IN NORWAY .... 298 

CHAPTER VI. 
THE PASS AND HOSPICE OF THE GREAT ST. BERNARD 329 



OLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PLANTS ON THE SUMMITS OF THE 
HIGHLAND MOUNTAINS. 

A THOUGHTFUL man, standing beneath the silent 
magnificence of the midnight heavens, is more 
deeply impressed by what is suggested than by 
what is revealed. He cannot gaze upon the soli- 
tary splendour of Sirius, or the clustered glories of 
Orion, without a vague unuttered wish to know 
whether these orbs are inhabited, and what are the 
nature and conditions of existence there. A similar 
feeling of curiosity seizes us when we behold afar 
off the summits of a lofty range of mountains, 
lying along the golden west like the shores of 
another and a brighter world. Elevated far above 
the busy commonplace haunts of men, rearing 
their mystic heads into the clouds, they seem to 
claim affinity with the heavens, and, like the stars, 
to dwell apart, retiring into a more awful and 
sacred solitude than exists on the surface of the 
jarth. We long for the wings of the eagle, to 
surmount in a moment all intervening obstacles, 
ind reach the shores of that upper world, that we 

B 



2 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

may know what strange arrangements of matter, 
what new forms of life, occur in a region so near 
to and so favoured of the skies. To many indi- 
viduals destitute of the strength of limb and sound- 
ness of lung necessary to climb the mountain side, 
or chained hopelessly to the monotonous employ- 
ments by which the daily bread fs earned, this 
must ever be an unattainable enjoyment— in sight, 
and yet unknown. Even of the thousands of 
tourists who as duly as the autumn comes round 
swarm over the familiar Highland routes, very 
few turn aside to behold this great sight. Only 
a solitary adventurous pedestrian, smitten with the 
love of science or of natural scenery, now and then 
cares to diverge from the beaten paths, from the 
region of coaches and extortionate hotel-keepers, 
in order to explore the primeval solitudes of the 
higher hills. For these and other reasons, a brief 
description of the characteristic vegetation of the 
Highland mountains may prove interesting and 
instructive to many. The information I have to 
lay before the reader has been acquired with much 
toil during many summer wanderings ; and if it 
should be the means of opening up to any one 
the way to a new field of research and a new set 
of sensations, I shall have much pleasure in the 
thought that my holidays have yielded other and 
higher than mere selfish benefits. 

Mountains exercise a peculiar and powerful 
fascination over the imagination. They transport 
us out of the fictitious atmosphere of civilization, 



l] the poetry of MOUNTAINS. 3 

and the cramping air of the world of taskwork, 
into the region of poetry and freedom. Among 
their serene and quiet retreats the fevered con- 
ventional life, brought face to face with the purity 
and the calm of nature, reverts to its primitive 
simplicity, the mind recovers its original elasticity, 
and the heart glows with its native warmth. Every 
individual finds in them something to admire, and 
to suit the tendencies of his mind. To the patriot 
they are the monuments of history, which have 
attracted to themselves, by kindred sympathy, 
some of the most remarkable events in the life 
of nations — guardians of liberty, whose high, em- 
battled ridges form an impenetrable rampart 
against the invading foe, and nourish within their 
fastnesses a hardy race, free as their own wild 
winds. To the poet they are the altars of nature, 
on which the golden-robed sun offers his morning 
| and evening sacrifice — footstools of God, before 
which his soul kneels, hushed in awe and rever- 
ence. To the philosophers they are the theatres 
in which the mightiest forces of nature are seen 
in intensest action, — the storehouses in which are 
treasured up all the sources of earth's beauty and 
fertility. While to the devotional mind they are 
types of the stability of the Christian promises, 
— emblems of the Infinite, the Eternal, and the 
Unchangeable. 

The fascination which mountains exercise ex- 
tends to all that is connected with them. Their 
own sublimity and grandeur are reflected, as it 

B 2 



4 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

were, upon all their productions ; and the low- 
liest object that hides under their shadow, or is 
nourished by their soil, acquires from that circum- 
stance an importance which does not intrinsically 
belong to it. Hence the peculiar charm which all 
botanists find in the pursuit of Alpine botany. 
The plants which grow upon the rugged sides and 
the bleak storm-scalped summits of the mountains, 
cannot generally be compared, in point of variety 
and beauty of colouring, and luxuriance of growth, 
with the flowers of the plains. They are for the 
most part tiny plants that, among their leaves of 
light, have no need of flowers — harmonizing in all 
their characters with their dreary habitats, and 
claiming apparently a closer affinity to the grey 
lichens and the brown mosses among which they 
nestle, than to their bright sisters of the valleys. 
But their comparative rarity, the magnificent and 
almost boundless prospects obtained from their 
elevated haunts, and the exhilarating nature of 
the mountain breezes and wild scenery, invest 
them with a halo of interest far exceeding that 
connected with woodland flowers ; and a glowing 
enthusiasm is felt in their collection which cannot 
be experienced in the tamer and less adventurous 
pursuit of lowland botany. 

The Highland mountains occupy but a very 
subsidiary position among the great mountain 
ranges of the earth. The highest peak in which 
they culminate does not reach the line of perpetual 
snow. No avalanche thunders over their precipices 






I.] CHARACTER OF HIGHLAND MOUNTAINS. 5 

to bury the villages at their base in ruins ; no 
glacier brings eternal winter down from his elevated 
throne into the midst of green cornfields and cul- 
tivated valleys, or yawns in dangerous crevasses 
across the traveller's path ; no volcano reddens 
the horizon with its lurid smoke and flame. Ages 
innumerable have passed away since the glacier 
flowed down their sides, and left its polished or 
striated marks on the rocks, to be deciphered by 
the skill of the geologist ; and those hills which 
once passed through a fiery ordeal, and poured 
their volcanic floods over the surrounding districts, 
now form the firmest foundations of the land, and 
afford quiet grassy pasturages for the sheep. Our 
mountains, indeed, possess few or none of those 
sublime attributes which invest the lofty ranges of 
other lands with gloom and terror. Their very 
storms are usually subdued, as if in harmony with 
their humbler forms. Though they tower to the 
sky, they seem nearer to the familiar earth ; and 
a large share of the beauty and verdure of the 
plains do they lift up with them in their rugged 
arms for the blessing of heaven. Every part of 
their domains is free and open to the active foot 
of the wanderer. There are few or no inaccessible 
precipices or profound abysses to form barriers in 
his way. He can plant his foot on their highest 
summits with little expenditure of breath and toil ; 
and a few hours will bring him from the stir and 
tumult of life in the heart of the populous city to 
their loneliest and wildest recesses. Well do I 



6 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

know and love my native hills ; for I have spent 
some of the happiest days of my life in wandering 
amid their solitudes, following my fancies fear- 
lessly wherever they led me. I have seen them 
in all seasons, and in all their varied aspects : — 
in the dim dawn, when, swathed in cold dark 
clouds, they seemed like awful countenances veiled, 
yet speaking in the tongues of a hundred unseen 
Waterfalls ; in the still noon-day, when, illumined 
with sunshine, every cliff and scar on their sides 
stood out distinctly and prominently against the 
pure clear sky ; at sunset, when, amid the 'masses 
of burnished gold that lay piled up in the west 
— the glow of fire that burns without consuming 
— they seemed like the embers of a universal 
conflagration ; in the holy twilight, when they 
appeared to melt into the purple beauty of a 
dream, and the golden summer moon and the soft 
bright star of eve rose solemnly over their brows, 
lighting them up with a mystical radiance ; and 
in the lone dark waste of midnight, when from 
lake and river the long trailing mists crept up 
their sides without hiding their far-off summits, 
on which twinkled, like earth-lighted watch-fires, 
a few uncertain stars. I have gazed upon them 
in the beauty of summer, when the heather was 
in full bloom, and for miles they glowed in masses 
of the loveliest purple ; in the changing splendour 
of autumn, when the deep green of the herbage 
gave place to the russet hues of the fading flowers, 
the rich orange of the ferns, and the dark brown 






I.] EARLY EXPLORATION. 7 

of the mosses ; and in the dreary depth of winter, 
when storms during the whole twilight-day howled 
around them, or when, robed from foot to crown 
in a garment of the purest snow, they seemed meet 
approaches to " the great white Throne." In all 
these aspects they were beautiful, and in all they 
excited thoughts and emotions which no human 
language could adequately express. 

Offering such facilities for search, it is not 
surprising that the vegetable productions of the 
British mountains should have been thoroughly 
investigated. Long before Botany became orga- 
nized as a distinct science, our Alpine flora attracted 
a large share of the attention of scientific men. 
In the days of Linnaeus — stimulated by the en- 
thusiastic impulse communicated by that remark- 
able man to every department of physical research 
— a band of devoted botanists undertook the ex- 
ploration of the Highland mountains ; a task by 
no means so easy then as in this age of steam- 
boats and railroads. The whole of the northern 
districts encircled by the mighty ramparts of the 
Grampian range was a terra incognita — virtually 
almost as remote from the civilized regions beyond 
as the wilds of Labrador. There were no roads, 
no conveyances, or other means of communication 
with the south. The adventurous men who first 
! opened up this wild territory to the researches 
of science were peculiarly adapted for the task 
of practical scientific pioneers. Endowed with 
vigorous frames and strong constitutions, they 



8 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

could endure a great amount of privation and 
fatigue with impunity. The names of Menzies, 
Lightfoot, Dickson, Stewart, and Don are familiar 
to every botanist as those of men who contended 
with innumerable obstacles in the prosecution of 
their favourite science, then in its feeblest infancy, 
and popularly regarded with indifference, if not 
with contempt. The memory of the last-men- 
tioned botanist especially is firmly engrafted in 
botanical literature, in connexion with his great 
services in this department. Such was his enthu- 
siastic love of Alpine plants, that he spent whole 
months at a time collecting them among the 
gloomy solitudes of the Grampians ; his only food 
a little meal, or a bit of crust moistened in the 
mountain burn, and his only couch a bed of 
heather or moss in the shelter of a rock. Before 
the storms of winter were over, and while the i 
snow still lay far down on the sides of the 
mountains, he began his wanderings in search of 
his favourites ; and often did he linger on till the • 
last autumn flower withered in the red October 
sunlight, and the shortening days and scowling 
heavens warned him of the universal desolation 
fast approaching. The whole of Western Aber- 
deenshire and Northern Forfarshire and Perthshire 
— where the loftiest mountains of Britain have 
congregated together, storming the sky in every 
direction with their gigantic peaks, and filling the j 
whole visible scene with themselves and their 
shadows — was almost as familiar to him as the 






I.] ALPINE BOTANISTS. 9 

circumscribed landscape around his native place. 
Nothing of any interest or importance on these 
great ranges escaped his eagle eye ; and from his 
numerous visits, and his lengthened sojourn among 
them, he was enabled to make many interesting 
discoveries, and to add an unusually large number 
of species to the flora of Britain. His discoveries 
were speedily followed up by others, especially 
by those of Dr. Greville, whose death has been 
one of the greatest losses to botanical science. 
Professors Graham and Hooker year after year 
conducted their pupils to the summits of the High- 
land hills ; and, not satisfied with a mere cursory 
visit, they carried tents and provisions with them, 
and encamped for a week or a fortnight in spots 
favourable for their investigations. So frequently 
within the last few years — particularly under the 
able leadership of Professor Balfour, whose annual 
class excursions are well known throughout Scot- 
land, and highly prized by all who have the 
privilege of sharing in them, and by the exertions 
of the "Scottish Botanical Alpine Club" — have 
the vegetable productions of the principal mountain 
ranges been investigated, that the most lynx-eyed 
botanist can now scarcely hope to do more than 
add a new station for some of the rarer plants. 

Only two organic forms — the common Red 
Grouse among animals, and the Neottia gemmi- 
pera, a species of orchid growing in the south of 
Ireland, among plants — seem to be peculiar to 
Great Britain. With these exceptions, all its 



10 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

fauna and flora consist of forms that have come 
from the adjacent continent of Europe, at periods 
more or less remote. A single plant, the jointed 
Pipe-wort (Eriocaulon septangulare), occurs in Glen 
Sligachan in the Isle of Skye, and in Connemara in 
the west of Ireland, and nowhere else, in Europe. 
It is a North American plant, and has no doubt 
been introduced naturally into the British Isles by 
means of transport now or anciently in action, very 
probably by the influence of the Gulf-stream, which 
frequently casts on the shores of the Hebrides the 
productions of the Western Hemisphere. Taking 
a comprehensive view of the plants of Great Britain, 
the botanist will find that, excluding exotic species 
derived from other countries along with the seed of 
our cultivated plants by direct human agency, they 
may be included in four tolerably distinct groups, 
which, from their relations to the flora of other 
parts of Europe, point to a diversified origin. By 
far the largest portion of our vegetation is com- 
posed of forms which are abundant over the whole 
of Central and Western Europe, and, from their 
common occurrence on both sides of the German 
Ocean, have received the name of Germanic plants. 
In the south-western and southern counties of 
England we find a numerous assemblage of plants 
which are seen nowhere else in the British Isles, 
and which, from their close relation to the flora 
of the north-west of France and the Channel 
Islands, have been denominated plants of the 
French type. A small but very distinct group of 



I.] PECULIARITIES OF HIGHLAND FLORA. 11 

hardy and prolific species is confined to the 
mountainous districts in the west and south-west 
of Ireland. These plants, numbering upwards of 
a score, are forms either peculiar to, or abundant 
in, the peninsula of Spain and Portugal, and es- 
pecially in Asturias. Lastly, we have the High- 
land type, which comprehends the species limited 
to the mountains and their immediate vicinity. 
This class embraces all the Alpine plants, and 
contains about a fifteenth of the whole flora of 
Britain — the number of distinct species amounting 
to upwards of a hundred. 

To the most superficial observer, viewed as a 
whole, Alpine plants will appear strikingly dif- 
ferent -from those which he is accustomed to see 
beside his path in the low grounds. The Lap- 
landers and Esquimaux are not more unlike the 
inhabitants of England and Scotland, than the 
Alpine flora is unlike that of the plains. The 
flowers which deck the woods and fields have no 
representatives in this lofty region. The traveller 
leaves them one after the other behind when he 
ascends beyond a certain elevation ; and though 
a few hardy kinds do succeed in climbing to the 
very summit, they assume strange forms which 
puzzle the eye, and become dwarfed and stunted 
by the severer climate and the ungenial soil. All 
the way up, from a line of altitude varying, accord- 
ing to the character of the mountain range, be- 
tween two and three thousand feet, you are in the 
midst of a new floral world, genera and species as 



12 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

unfamiliar as though you had been suddenly and 
unconsciously spirited away to a foreign country. 
There are a few isolated islands scattered over the 
ocean, whose forms of life are unique. St. Helena 
and the Galapagos Archipelago are such centres 
of creation, having nothing in common with the 
nearest mainland. It is the same with the moun- 
tain summits in this country that are higher than 
three thousand feet. They may be compared to 
islands in an aerial ocean, having a climate and 
animal and vegetable productions quite distinct 
from those of the low grounds. Their plants grow 
in thick masses, covering extensive surfaces with 
a soft carpet of moss-like foliage, and producing 
a profusion of blossoms, large in proportion to the 
size of the leaves, and often of brilliant shades of 
red, white, and blue; or they creep along the 
ground in thickly interwoven woody branches, 
wholly depressed, sending out at intervals a few 
hard, wrinkled leaves, and very small, faintly- 
coloured, and inconspicuous flowers. Their roots 
are usually very woody, or, like those of bulbous 
plants, wrapped up in membraneous coverings ; 
and their stems are strongly inclined to form buds. 
They are almost all perennial, the number of 
annuals being exceedingly small. In all these 
typical peculiarities, which, it may be remarked, 
are special adaptations to the unfavourable cir- 
cumstances in which they are placed, they bear 
a very close resemblance to the plants of the Polar 
Zone ; and this similarity in the character of the 



I.} MOUNTAIN PLANTS OF JAVA. 13 

vegetation may be traced from the Arctic regions 
to the Equator, if we compare, on the mountains 
of the different zones, the corresponding higher 
regions, where the isothermal lines are the same, 
with each other. It must be understood, however, 
that, except in cases where the plants were 
originally derived from one centre of distribution, 
through migration over continuous or closely con- 
tinuous land, the relationship of Alpine and Arctic 
vegetation in the Southern Hemisphere, under 
similar conditions with that of the Northern, is 
entirely maintained by representative, and not by 
identical species — the representation, too, being in 
great part generic^ and not specific. 

Strange to say, though so near Europe, the lofty 
peak of Teneriffe contains on its sides and summit 
no Alpine flora of a European type. The Retamas 
of the highest zone are as peculiar to the island as 
the Euphorbias of the lowest. This absence of 
northern forms is probably owing to the immense 
amount of the radiation and the unfavourable hy- 
grometrical conditions of the locality. An equal 
destitution of Alpine vegetation has been observed 
on the mountains of Bourbon and Mauritius. On 
the isolated volcanic peaks of Java, however, 
though south of the equator, we have plants 
closely allied to those of the Grampians, while 
a totally different class of plants clothes the low- 
lands for thousands of miles around. At a height 
of 8000 feet, on the Pangerango mountain, in 
Java, Mr. Wallace found upwards of forty species, 



14 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

representing European and Alpine genera, and 
four species actually identical with European spe- 
cies. The Artemisia or southernwood, and the 
ribwort plantain — the commonest weeds in every 
British field — occur on this peak at a height of 
9000 feet. Beside them, in the damp shade of 
the thickets, is found the royal cowslip [primula 
imperialis), which has a tall stout stem more than 
three feet high, with root-leaves eight inches long, 
and having, instead of a single terminal cluster 
of cowslip-like flowers, several tiers or whorls, one 
above another, like a Chinese pagoda. This gor- 
geous cowslip is found nowhere else in the world 
but on this solitary mountain -summit. On the 
higher slopes of the Himalayas, and on the tops 
of the mountains of Central India and Abyssinia, 
a great many European genera are found, whose 
existence in such spots Mr. Darwin believes to 
be owing to the depression of temperature that 
was so general during the glacial epoch, as to 
allow a few north temperate plants to cross the 
equator by the most elevated routes of mountain- 
chains, and to reach the Antarctic regions where 
they are now found. He believes that the plants 
on the equatorial summits and the Alpine plants 
of Europe sprang from a common parentage, and 
that the modifications which the former have un- 
dergone are owing entirely to altered conditions 
operating during a long period of time. In New 
Zealand, which is the head-quarters of the Com- 
posite as well as the ferns, a very remarkable 



I.] NEW ZEALAND COMPOSITE PLANTS. 15 

genus of composite plants, called Raoulia^ occurs 
on the sides and summits of the loftier mountains. 
It numbers twelve distinct species, all of which 
range from 3000 to 7000 feet on Mounts Cook 
and Doban, and the Nelson and Otago moun- 
tains, and form dense wide-spreading carpets or 
cushions. The down on the leaves is developed 
to such an extent as to completely cover them, 
and almost to conceal the star-like flower-heads. 
One species, the R. eximia, forms gigantic white 
woolly masses on the ground, and looks at a dis- 
tance like a flock of sheep grazing on the moun- 
tain-side. Indeed the shepherds are so often 
deceived by them when folding their charge, that 
the plant has come to be known among the settlers 
as the " vegetable sheep." This curious genus re- 
presents in New Zealand the common cat's-paw 
or mountain everlasting [Antennaria dioica), whose 
dry white or pink flowers and downy leaves cover 
our moorlands in myriads ; or rather, perhaps, the 
closely-allied Gnaphalium supinum, a tiny cud- 
weed which grows on the extreme summits of 
the highest Highland mountains. There is one 
Alpine Gnaphalium, found in almost every part 
of the Alps from 6500 to 8500 feet above the 
sea, called the G. leontopodium, or lion's-paw cud- 
weed, — the Edelweiss of the natives, — whose dense 
heads are smothered in white silky down. The 
New Zealand " vegetable sheep " is, therefore, only 
an extraordinary development of this peculiarity 
of the tribe even on our own mountains. 



16 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

There are several curious anomalies in the dis- 
tribution of Alpine plants, for which no perfectly 
satisfactory explanation has yet been given. For 
instance, the genus Dioscorea is pre-eminently 
tropical, being peculiar to the hottest regions of 
the old and new worlds, the roots of several mem- 
bers being esculent, and used as culinary veget- 
ables, like potatoes. Strange to say, one species 
of the family, and only one, is found in Europe, 
the D. Pyrenaica. which is an Alpine plant re- 
cently discovered at a considerable altitude on 
the Pyrenees. In like manner the genus Pelar- 
gonium is peculiarly African and Australian ; and 
yet a species of it, also an Alpine plant, the 
P. Endlickeridnum, has been found on the chain 
of the Taurus in several stations extending from 
Pamphylia to Armenia 1 . The extraordinary genus 
Pilostyles, resembling in miniature the gigantic 

1 On the Spanish plateau, several of the plants common in the 
Crimea and in the elevated plains of Asia Minor occur. Geum 
heterocarpum is found in the mountain regions of South Spain, and 
of Elborus in Persia. Rhododendron Ponticum, which inhabits the 
mountains of Asia Minor, occurs on the mountain range of the 
Sierra de Monchique, in Portugal. The cedar of the Lebanon is 
supposed to be only a variety of the cedar of the Atlas mountains 
opposite to Spain. Every botanist is struck with the resemblance 
in type between the vegetation of the arid elevated tracts of Spain 
and that of the southern steppes of Russia ; and some species are 
common to both. The Cynomorium coccineum, growing in the island 
of Malta, the Fungus Melitensis of the old writers, and supposed to 
be the celebrated styptic used by the Crusaders to staunch their 
wounds, extends to the Levant in the East, and to Northern Africa 
and the Canary islands in the West; in which latter place it is used 
as food. 



I.] PELARGONIUM AND PILOSTYLES. 17 

Rafflesia of the Eastern Archipelago — without 
root, stem, or leaves, and consisting only of a bell- 
shaped flower sessile on the bark of the tree on 
which it is a parasite — is peculiar to South America. 
A species, however, has recently been found in the 
Alpine regions of Asia Minor, called P. Haus- 
knechtii ; and though so far out of its proper 
region, it preserves the peculiar habit of the genus. 
All the species grow T on the bean family ; and, 
true to its native instinct, this Asiatic rover is con- 
fined exclusively to a kind of spiny Astragalus. To 
account for the presence of this South American 
plant on the mountains of Asia Minor is one of 
the knottiest ■ points in geographical botany. We 
can explain in some measure the occurrence of 
the African Pelai'gonium on the mountains of 
Taurus on the same grounds that we can account 
for the remarkable similarity — the almost identity 
— of the cedar of the Atlas range and the cedar 
of Lebanon and of the mountains of Taurus. Great 
changes of surface in very recent geological times 
have taken place on the African and Asiatic con- 
tinents, as is proved by many Mediterranean spe- 
cies of fishes being found in the Red Sea and 
yet not in the Indian Ocean ; by the fishes of the 
I salt lakes of Sahara being identical with those of 
\ the Gulf of Guinea ; and, more extraordinary still, 
those of the Sea of Galilee with those of the Nile, 
of the lakes of South-eastern Africa, and the 
Zambesi. During some one or other of the great 
changes of sea and land necessary to produce 

C 



18 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

this remarkable resemblance between the inha- 
bitants of waters now so remote and isolated, the 
Pelargonium may have spread from Africa to Asia 
Minor. The occurrence of the genus in Australia 
may be owing to the same cause which produced 
the resemblance between the marsupial animals, 
and especially the plants, of Europe during the 
Eocene epoch, and those of Australia at the 
present day ; a resemblance so striking, that in 
order to form an idea of the appearance of our 
country during this geological period we have only 
to visit our great colony at the Antipodes. The 
Proteaceae are the characteristic plants of the 
Eocene period of Europe. They constituted, in 
that early epoch, the principal part of the scrub 
vegetation of our continent, as they now form 
the peculiar clothing of the wastes of Australia. 
But what is the connexion between the sub-Alpine 
Pilostyles of Asia Minor and the rest of its family 
in South America? It has been ascertained that 
the sub-tropical flora of Europe during the Miocene 
epoch is largely American and Japanese. Of the 
Swiss Miocene plants, for instance, no less than 
232 species have their nearest allies living in the 
United States and tropical America, while 108 
occur in Asia. In all probability, therefore, the 
Miocene flora of Europe came from America during 
the Eocene epoch, across the Atlantic, over a 
great island-continent then existing, which bo- 
tanists have called 'Atlantis,' after the ancient 
legend ; and since the Miocene period, this Amer- 



I.] ORIGIN OF HIGHIAND FLORA. 19 

ican flora spread from Europe over Asia Minor, 
Northern Asia, and Japan, in comparatively high 
latitudes and at considerable elevations, returning 
to their birthplace by these routes, after having 
made the circuit of the globe. The present flora 
of America has descended from these progenitors 
— the plants of the Eocene and Cretaceous periods 
of that continent. If we accept this hypothetical 
Atlantic continent as a scientific fact — established, 
as it is, by many curious coincidences — it explains 
to us how there should still be left on the moun- 
tains of Asia Minor — like a shell on the shore — 
a solitary survivor of an ancient American flora 
identical with the present. The Pilostyles of Asia 
Minor stands in very much the same relation to 
the ancient American flora of Europe and Northern 
Asia, as the one species of myrtle and the one 
species of laurel now left to us stand to the very 
large family of myrtles and laurels which spread 
over Central Europe during the tertiary epoch, 
and have retreated in these days to the tropical 
and subtropical countries of the two worlds, where 
they are as numerous as of old. 

But in passing from these interesting specula- 
tions in general geographical botany to the con- 
sideration of our own Alpine flora, a very in- 
teresting question arises, — What is the origin 
of these plants on the British hills ? We can 
hardly suppose them to be indigenous ; for they 
evidently maintain their existence, in the very 
imited areas to which they are confined, with 

C 2 



20 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

extreme difficulty, and are comparatively few in 
number, and poor and meagre in appearance. For 
these reasons we are fairly entitled to conclude that 
they are members of specific centres beyond their 
own area ; and these centres must be sought in 
places where the physical conditions are most 
favourable for their growth, and where they attain 
the utmost profusion and luxuriance of which they 
are constitutionally capable. Now, if we examine 
the flora of the Lapland and Norwegian mountains, 
we find that it is not only specifically identical with 
that of the British Isles, but also that the species of 
the former are more numerous, and exhibit a greater 
development of individual forms, than those of the 
latter, constituting in many places the common 
continuous vegetation of extensive districts 1 . This 
fact seems to indicate the Scandinavian mountains 
as the geographical centres from which we have 
derived our Alpine plants \ and, as might have been 
expected, allowing this supposition to be true, their 
gradual migration southwards may be very dis- 
tinctly traced, like the descent in after ages of the 



1 In a collection of fifty-two plants from Baffin's Bay, in lat. 67 
and 76 N., made by a friend some years ago, twenty were identical 
with British species, only somewhat smaller and more stunted. 
They were gathered dining June and July, when the flowers were 
fully expanded, chiefly on the sea-shore, only three being peculiar to 
a more elevated locality. The prevailing colour was dark or pale 
yellow; blue or lilac flowers being comparatively rare. Of the 
same natural orders seventy-four species occur in great Britain at an 
elevation of three thousand feet or upwards. 



I.] MIGRATION OF ALPINE PLANTS. 21 

rude Norsemen, by the species left behind on nu- 
merous intervening points. On the Faroe Islands, 
for instance, we have three plants of the Scandina- 
vian type which have stopped short there — viz. 
Saxifraga tricuspidata^ Koenigia islandica, and 
Ranunculus nivalis. In the Shetland Islands, the 
Arenaria Norwegica, a common plant on the moun- 
tain plateaux of Norway, reaches its southern limits. 
On the northern shores of the mainland, the beau- 
tiful Norwegian primrose appears and ceases. It 
is called Primula farinosa^ variety alpina, by 
Norwegian botanists ; but it differs in no respect 
from the P. Scotica of Sutherland and Caithness- 
shire, except in the colour of the flower being paler, 
the tube a little longer, and the calyx elliptical 
rather than ovate. A rich assemblage of northern 
forms is found on the loftiest Highland mountains, 
distributed apparently from north-east to south- 
west, in such a manner as to indicate the line of 
migration. Several species were left behind on the 
Braemar mountains ; while an unusually large pro- 
portion is confined to the Breadalbane range, and 
does not occur further south. Upwards of a score 
of plants found on the Scottish Alps do not reach 
the English mountains ; while several species are 
to be met with on Skiddaw and other hills in the 
north of England which do not extend to the 
r Snowdonian range — Ireland receiving only a few 
sporadic species. We find the last representa- 
tives of this peculiar vegetation on the Alps of 
Switzerland, at various elevations from 6oco to 



22 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

io,ooo feet, growing in great luxuriance among a 
representative flora special in its region, — a few 
stragglers reaching the Pyrenees in the west, and 
the Carpathian mountains in the east. Arenaria 
rubella, Saxifraga rivularis, and Alopecurus Alpinus, 
are found in Britain, but have failed to reach the 
continent ; while Ranunculus pygmceus, Carex us- 
tulata, Astragalus oroboides, Stellaria Friesiana, 
Alsine biflora, Saxifraga cernua, S. nivalis, and 
vS. hieracifolia are widely distributed throughout 
Norway, but on the continent are confined to one 
or two localities in Switzerland and the Tyrol. 
We thus find a gradual diminution of the Scandina- 
vian flora as we advance southwards — a convincing 
proof that it has been diffused in that direction 
from its original centres of distribution on the 
elevated ranges of Norway and Lapland. And, 
regarded from this point of view, Alpine plants 
may be divided into the boreal type, comprehending 
those species which are confined to the north of 
Europe, and do not reach further south than Wales, 
and the Alpino-boreal, which not only extend over 
the most elevated land in the British Isles, but also 
occur in abundance at high altitudes on the Swiss 
Alps and the Pyrenees. 

Having thus ascertained the region from which 
our Alpine vegetation was derived, we have next to 
account for its transmission. Norway and Britain, 
at the present day, are widely separated from each 
other by an extensive sea ; and no modes of 
transportation now in operation are sufficient to 






I.] MIGRATION OF ALPINE PLANTS. 23 

account for the diffusion of the peculiar plants of 
the one country over the mountain ranges of the 
other, in such a manner as we find them distributed. 
The problem was quite inexplicable on the sup- 
position formerly entertained, that there has been 
no striking alteration in the condition of the earth's 
surface since the present flora of the globe was 
created, and that the relations of Britain and 
Norway to each other have always been the same 
as they are now. It need not be wondered at, 
therefore, that botanists took refuge from the dif- 
ficulty in the hypothesis that species have been 
created indifferently, wherever the conditions were 
fitted for their growth. But now that we know, 
from recently ascertained geological facts, that 
great changes affecting the arrangement of land 
and water throughout the north of Europe have 
taken place during the period of the existence of 
modern vegetation, the key to the mystery has 
been ascertained 1 . 

Attention was first directed to this inquiry 
by the late lamented Professor E. Forbes, at the 
meeting of the British Association in 1845; and 

1 The fishes of the Gulf of Bothnia are identical with those of 
the Arctic Ocean and White Sea ; and yet these fishes occur nowhere 
on the Norwegian coasts, the only route by which, under the 
present- distribution of land and water, they could have reached 
; the one locality from the other. This circumstance proves 
I that the Baltic and the Arctic Ocean were once connected. It 
is probable that the plains of Lapland were once under water, 
and that the Scandinavian peninsula was a group of mountainous 
islands. 



24 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

his views on the subject — supported by the most 
ample and, I think, conclusive evidence, derived 
from botanical, geological, and more especially 
zoological facts — are published at considerable 
length in the " Memoirs of the Geological Survey." 
It may seem a superfluous task to direct attention 
to these views, considering the length of time they 
have been before the scientific public ; but I am 
pe'rsuaded they are not so well known as they 
ought to be ; and to many, a brief popular deli- 
neation of them will come with all the interest of 
novelty. 

Geological researches have furnished us with two 
fixed points in time between which this migration 
of Scandinavian plants to the British hills took 
place. It must have occurred after the deposition 
of the London Clay, or the Eocene tertiary epoch ; 
for the organic remains found in that formation 
belong to a flora very different from, and requiring 
a far warmer climate than, any now existing on 
the European continent. And, on the other hand, 
our great deposits of peat furnish us with con- 
clusive evidence that it must have happened before 
the epoch usually designated "historical." Between 
these two periods, geological changes occurred 
which greatly altered the surface of our islands, 
and modified their climate and the distribution of 
their organic forms. From the relics left behind, 
we learn that a great part of the existing area of 
Great Britain, especially the lowland plains and 
valleys, was covered with the waters of a sea which 









I.] GLACIAL EPOCH. 25 

extended over the north and centre of Europe, and 
was characterised by phenomena nearly identical 
with those now presenting themselves on the north- 
east coast of America within the line of summer 
floating ice. This was the sea of the glacial 
period — properly so styled — when a condition of 
climate existed which will account for all the 
organic phenomena observed in the boulder clays 
and Pleistocene drifts. In the midst of this sea, 
the various mountain ranges and isolated hills, 
which now tower high above the surrounding 
country, were islands, whose bases and sides were 
washed by the cold waves and abraded by the 
passing ice-floes, and whose summits were covered 
in many places with glaciers, which left their 
enduring and unmistakeable records on the rocks, 
and in the moraines at their foot. It was at this 
period that our now elevated regions received 
the flora and fauna observed upon them at the 
present day. Owing to their favourable position 
in the midst of an ice-covered sea, the means of 
transport existed in abundance ; and the Arctic 
flora thus brought down, and gradually dissemi- 
nated over all the islands as far as the sea ex- 
tended, has ever since been able to maintain its 
footing, even under the altered climate of our 
times, according to the general law of climatal 
influence, through the elevation of the tracts which 
it inhabits. " This flora would probably differ 
slightly in different parts of its area, and hence 
part of the variations now existing between the 



26 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Alpine floras of Europe. Differences might further 
result from accidental destruction of the localities 
of plants scattered sporadically, and from the 
extinction of forms by various causes during the 
long period which has elapsed since they first 
became mountain plants." 

There is one remarkable fact wh'ich may be 
noticed in passing, as affording something like 
circumstantial evidence in favour of this theory. 
At an elevation of between 3000 and 4000 feet 
on the principal mountain ranges of Scotland, 
the botanist is astonished to observe the common 
sea-pink, called by the Highlanders Tonag-a-chla- 
daich^ growing among the rocks in the utmost 
profusion. It is precisely identical with that which 
forms so ornamental a feature in the scenery of 
our sea-coasts ; in chemical composition, and in 
botanical appearance and structure, little or no 
difference can be detected between specimens 
gathered in both localities. Nor is it in the High- 
lands of Scotland alone that the plant is found 
in such an unusual situation. All over the con- 
tinent of Europe it occurs on the highest moun- 
tains, passing from the coast over extensive tracts 
of country. It has never been found in the 
intermediate plains and valleys, except when it 
has been brought down by mountain streams. 
This singular circumstance, otherwise inexplicable, 
would seem strongly to indicate that our mountain 
chains, as w T ell as those of Northern and Central 
Europe, were once, as Professor Forbes asserts, 



I.] THE SCURVY GRASS. 27 

islands in the midst of an extensive sea. Plants 
of sub-Arctic and maritime character would then 
flourish to the water's edge, some of which would 
afterwards disappear under altered climatal and 
physical conditions, leaving the hardiest behind. 
Another survivor of the ancient maritime flora 
which once clothed our mountain sides on a level 
with the glacial waves, is the Cochlearia Green- 
landica^ or scurvy grass, so called from its peculiar 
medicinal use. Abundant on all our sea-coasts, 
and never growing inland, it is found on isolated 
spots at a great elevation on the Highland hills. 
It may easily be known by its thick tufts, bearing 
the small white flowers and hot acrid leaves pe- 
culiar to the cress tribe. It is so hardy as to defy 
the severest cold of the Arctic regions, being found 
by polar navigators in Melville Island, under the 
snow, at the very farthest limit of vegetation. 
Farther down, on the sides of our great mountain 
ranges, we still occasionally observe the Plantago 
maritima, another plant existing nowhere else but 
on the sea-shore. During the glacial epoch it 
would flourish in a lower zone than the others, 
nearer the water's edge, and hence its peculiar 
altitudinal position at the present day. These 
three examples, for which no other plausible ex- 
planation can be offered, go far to substantiate 
the theory of the transmission of the Scandinavian 
flora to our islands, in consequence of the great 
changes of surface and climate which took place 
during the glacial epoch. 



28 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

The plants growing at the present day on the 
Scottish mountains are thus not only different 
from those found in the valleys at their base, but 
they are also much older. They are the surviving 
relics of what constituted for many ages the sole 
flora of Europe, when Europe consisted only of 
islands scattered at distant intervals over a wide 
waste of waters bristling with icebergs and ice- 
flops. How suggestive of marvellous reflection 
is the thought, that these flowers, so fragile that 
the least rude breath of wind might break them, 
and so delicate that they fade with the first 
scorching heat of August, have existed in their 
lonely and isolated stations on the Highland hills 
from a time so remote that, in comparison with it, 
the antiquity of recorded time is but as yester- 
day ; have survived all the vast cosmical changqs 
which elevated them, along with the hills upon 
which they grew, to the clouds — converted the 
bed of a mighty ocean into a fertile continent, 
peopled it with new races of plants and animals, 
and prepared a scene for the habitation of man ! 
Only a few hundred individual plants of each 
species — in some instances only a few tufts here 
and there — are to be found on the different moun- 
tains ; and yet these little colonies, prevented by 
barriers of climate and soil from spreading them- 
selves beyond their native spots, have gone on 
season after season for thousands of ages, renewing 
their foliage and putting forth their blossoms, 
though beaten by the storms, scorched by the 



I.] ALTITUDE AND LATITUDE. 29 

sunshine, and buried by the Alpine snows, scath- 
less and vigorous while all else was changing 
around. It is one of the most striking and con- 
vincing examples within the whole range of natural 
history, of the permanency of species ! 

Our globe may be compared to two enormous 
snow-capped mountains set base to base at the 
equator ; the Northern Hemisphere representing 
one, and the Southern the other. The equator is 
the foot of each ; the middle part of both answers 
to the two temperate zones, north and south ; and 
the opposite summits correspond with the Arctic 
and Antarctic regions. Thus in each tropical 
mountain we have an epitome of half of the great 
earth itself ; and all the climates of the world, and 
all the zones of vegetation may be felt and seen 
in passing from its foot to its top in a single day. 
Altitude is analogous with latitude. To climb a 
lofty Highland hill is equivalent to undertaking a 
summer voyage to the Arctic regions ; a vertical 
ascent of 4000 feet in three hours enabling us to 
reach a north pole which we could only have 
attained in as many months by a journey through 
seventy degrees of latitude. The leading phe- 
nomena of the Polar world are presented to us 
on a small scale within the circumscribed area of 
the mountain summit. The same specific rocks 
along which Parry and Ross coasted in the un- 
known seas of the North, here crop above the 
surface, and yield by their disintegration the same 
kind of vegetation. The Alpine hare is common 



30 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

to both ; and the ptarmigan, which penetrates in 
large flocks as far as Melville Island, is often seen 
flying round the grey rocks of the higher Gram- 
pians, and exhibiting its singular changes of 
plumage from a mottled brown in summer to pure 
white in winter, so rapidly as to be perceptible 
from day to day. Although none of the Scotch 
mountains reach the line of perpetual snow, yet 
large snowy masses, smoothed and hardened by 
pressure into the consistence of glacier-ice, not 
unfrequently lie in shady hollows all the year 
round, and remind one of the frozen hills of 
Greenland and Spitzbergen. Sweltering with 
midsummer heat in the low confined valleys, we 
are here revived and invigorated by the chill 
breezes of the Pole. We have thus in our own 
country, and within short and easy reach of our 
busiest towns, specimens and exact counterparts 
of those terrible Arctic fastnesses, to explore which 
every campaign has been made at the cost of 
endurance beyond belief — often at the sacrifice 
of the most noble and valuable lives. 

Our Alpine plants may be distributed in three 
distinct zones of altitude, characterised by Mr. 
Watson in his admirable " Cybele Britannica " dif- 
ferently from the usual mode. We have first the 
stiper-Arctic zone, bounded below by the limit of 
the common heather at an elevation of about 3000 
feet, and defined negatively by the absence, rather 
than the presence, of particular plants, only two 
species being peculiar to it in this country. This 



I.] ZONES OF ALTITUDE. 31 

zone, characterised as that of the herbaceous 
willow without the heather, occurs only in the 
Highland provinces, where the highest mountains 
have their summits considerably above the limits 
of the heather. We have next, lower down, the 
mid-Arctic zone, lying between the heather line and 
that of the cross-leaved heath, at about 2000 feet, 
characterised by the heather without the heath. 
This comprehends the highest mountains of Eng- 
land, Wales, and Ireland, and all the great ranges 
of Scotland, and contains by far the largest pro- 
portion of rare and beautiful -Alpine plants, being 
especially rich in Arctic forms. And, lastly, we 
have the infer-Arctic zone, bounded above by the 
Erica and below by the bracken, and the limits of 
cultivation at about 1400 feet. Of course in this 
zone, which may be characterised as that of the 
cross-leaved heath without the brake fern, the 
plants approach more closely to the Lowland type, 
though containing a large number of species of the 
true Alpine and Arctic form. These three zones of 
altitude are distinguished generally by the affinity 
of their flora to that of the most northern parts of 
Europe, Siberia, and America, and in a less degree 
to that of the higher parts of the Swiss Alps, 
Pyrenees, and Carpathians. We must regard this 
arrangement, however, though very convenient for 
general purposes, as somewhat arbitrary and arti- 
ficial ; for Nature is never definite in her lines of 
demarcation : on the one hand, many Alpine 
plants growing indiscriminately, in all the three 



32 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

zones, and descending in some places even to the 
sea-shore ; while, on the other hand, many common 
Lowland species come up from the cultivated re- 
gions, and grow on the highest summits, although 
suffering a stunting of their habit from the severer 
climate. 

Accidental or local circumstances produce con- 
siderable variations in the altitude of various 
species. The violent storms which frequently rage 
in mountain regions sometimes detach fragments 
of soil, in which several species are rooted, and 
plant them far down among the productions of the 
valley. Alpine streams not only bring down the 
seeds of Alpine plants, but also, to a certain extent, 
the cold of the summits, so that their banks will 
support the species of a severer climate than is 
natural to the latitude and elevation. On the other 
hand, deep lakes and other large sheets of water — 
as they are less liable to sudden changes than the 
atmosphere, and preserve a nearly equal tempera- 
ture all the year round — sensibly mitigate the 
climate of the mountains in their immediate 
vicinity, at considerable heights above their sur- 
face. Hence we not unfrequently find, at an 
elevation of 2000 and even 3000 feet, the plants 
pecular to the edge of the water and the lowest 
declivities blooming in great abundance and luxu- 
riance. In Ireland, in consequence of the vaporous 
atmosphere and the less amount of sunlight, cer- 
tain Alpine plants range to a lower level than in 
England and Scotland. The Alpine hare is found 



I.] ALTITUDINAL RANGE OF PLANTS. 33 

in some places at the sea-shore. The humid and 
equable climate of Ireland resembles that of the 
Northern Scottish Isles, where the same thing takes 
place. On the southern slopes of great ranges 
which are sheltered from the northern blasts, and 
more exposed to the light and heat of the sun, the 
same species are found at a higher altitude than 
on the northern side. The range, as well as the 
character, of the flora is also greatly influenced by 
the geological construction of the mountains, plu- 
tonic rocks beincr warmer tfean sedimentary — the 
number o^^racry rocks anaMpetf^t precipices, or 
comparatively smcRSS^V^Sy slopesXthe direction 
and natiire of t&£| |$r4vailtgg4vinds ; me frequency 
of strean\e>^nd wells ; and, abovq^arf by the geo- 
graphical p^s|^%^^t^^ills^}jiM^ther they form 
part of an extensTl'L' ami LUllTmuous chain, carrying 
the general level of the country to a considerable 
height above the sea-line, and abounding in ele- 
vated plateaux and corries, or whether they form 
conical or isolated peaks rising abruptly from the 
plains. Considerable allowances must also be 
made for different latitudes ; for although the area 
of the British Isles is somewhat limited, there is a 
considerable difference between the temperature 
of the northern and southern points ; so that the 
isothermal lines of Caithness and Sutherland, at 
an elevation of 1300 feet, correspond to those of 
the summit of Snowdon. The mean annual tem- 
perature in the south-west of England is 5 2°; 
whereas in the central districts of Scotland it is 

D 



34 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

only 47°, and in the north-east counties as low as 
46 or even 45°, — one degree being deducted for 
inland localities under the same latitude, and one 
degree for each three hundred feet of elevation 
above the level of the sea. Attributing their due 
influence to all these disturbing causes, it will be 
found, with tolerable regularity and definiteness, 
that the region occupied by the true Alpine flora 
extends from an elevation of 2000 feet to the 
summits of our highest mountains. This region, 
as may be easily imagined, is the dreariest and 
most desolate portion of our country. 

Etherealized by the changing splendour of the 
heavens as the mountain summit appears when 
surveyed from below, rising up from the huge 
mound of rock and earth like a radiant flower 
above its dark foliage, it affords another illustration 
of the poetic adage, that "Tis distance lends 
enchantment to the view." When you actually 
stand, upon it, you find that the reality is very 
different from the ideal. The clouds that float 
over it, " those mountains of another element," 
which looked from the valley like fragments of 
the sun, now appear in their true character as 
masses of cold dull vapour ; and the mountain 
peak, deprived of the transforming glow of light, 
has become one of the most desolate spots on 
which the eye can rest. Not a tuft of grass, not 
a bush of heather, is to be seen anywhere. The 
earth, beaten hard by the frequent footsteps of 
the storm, is leafless as the world on the first 






NATURE OF MOUNTAIN SUMMITS. 35 

norning of creation. Huge fragments of roeks, 

he monuments of elemental wars, rise up here 

ind there, so rugged and distorted that they 

;eem like nightmares petrified ; while the ground 

s frequently covered with cairns of loose hoary 

;tones, which look like the bones which remained 

mused after nature had built up the great skeleton 

)f the earth, and which she had cast aside in this 

solitude to blanch and crumble away unseen. 

When standing there during a misty storm, it 

•equires little effort of imagination to picture your- 

;elf a shipwrecked mariner, cast ashore on one of 

;he sublimely barren islands of the Antarctic 

3cean. You involuntarily listen to hear the moan- 

ng of the waves, and watch for the beating of the 

baming surge on the rocks around. The dense 

writhing mists hurrying up from the profound 

ibysses on every side imprison you within "the 

larrow circle of their ever-shifting walls/' and 

)enetrate every fold of your garments, and your 

kin itself, becoming a constituent of your blood, 

nd chilling the very marrow of your bones. 

ground you there is nothing visible save the 

ague vacant sea of mist, with the shadowy form 

f some neighbouring peak looming through it 

ke the genius of the storm ; while your ears are 

eafened by the howling of the wind among the 

hirling masses of mist, by " the airy tongues that 

liable men's names," the roaring of the cataracts, 

id the other wild sounds of the desert never 

amb. And yet, dreary and desolate although 

D 2 



36 HO LID A YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the scene usually appears, it has its own periods 
of beauty, its own days of brightness and cheer- 
fulness.. Often in the quiet autumn noon the eye 
is arrested by the mute appeal of some lovely 
Alpine flower, sparkling like a lone star in a mid- 
night sky, among the tufted moss' and the hoary 
lichens, and seeming, as it issues from the stony 
mould, an emanation of the indwelling life, a 
visible token of the upholding love which pervades 
the wide universe. If winter and spring in that 
elevated region be one continued storm, the short 
summer of a few weeks' duration seems one en- 
chanting festival of light. The life of earth is 
then born in"dithyrambic joy," blooms and bears 
fruit under the glowing sunshine, the balmy breezes, 
and the rich dews of a few days. Scenes of life, 
interest and beauty are crowded together with a 
seeming rapidity as if there were no time to lose. 
Flowers the fairest and the most fragile expand 
their exquisitely pencilled blossoms even amid 
dissolving wreaths of snow, and produce an im- 
pression all the more delightful and exhilarating 
from the consciousness of their short-lived beautyr 
and the contrast they exhibit to the desolation 
that immediately preceded. 

A large proportion of our Alpine plants are 
universally diffused, being found in abundance on 
all the British mountains of sufficient elevation. 
The Alpine Alchemilla carpets with its satiny 
leaves the sides of every mountain at an elevation 
of about a thousand feet. In Braemar it forms 



I.] COMMON ALPINE PLANTS. 37 

the common verdure by the wayside, and mingles 
with the daisies beside the village houses. The 
Sibbaldia procumbens^ somewhat resembling it, is 
abundant on all the Highland hills, though it does 
not penetrate farther south. By the roadside on 
the ascent of the Cairnwall, near Braemar, it is 
exceedingly common ; while the mountain Rue 
(Thalictrum alpmum), the white Alpine Cerastium, 
the purple-rayed Erigeron or Alpine Fleabane, the 
snowy Dryas, the blue Veronica, the Alpine Saus- 
surea and Potentilla, are comparatively common on 
all the higher ranges of England, Wales, and Scot- 
land. But the most common and abundant of the 
plants which grow on the Highland mountains are 
the different species of Saxifrage. They are found 
in cold bleak situations all over the world, from the 
Arctic Circle to the Equator, and, with the mosses 
and lichens, form the last efforts of expiring nature 
which fringe around the limits of eternal snow. A 
familiar example of the tribe is very frequently 
cultivated in old-fashioned gardens and rockeries 
under the name of London Pride. Though little 
prized, on account of its commonness, this plant 
has a remarkable pedigree. It grows wild on the 
romantic hills in the south-west of Ireland, from 
i which all the plants that are cultivated in our 
gardens, and that have escaped from cultivation 
into woods and waste places, have been originally 
derived. In that isolated region the London Pride 
is associated with a remarkable group of plants 
which belong to the Pyrenean or Iberian flora, and 



38 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

are not met with elsewhere in the British Isles or in 
Northern Europe. There are six species of Saxi- 
frage, wS. urnbrosa,) S. Geitm, S. hirsute S. hirta^ 
S. Andrewsii, S. affinis ; three species of heather, 
Erica Mediterranean E. Mackiana, and St. Dabeocs 
Heath [Daboecia polifolid) ; the weH-known straw- 
berry-tree of Killarney, Arbutus Unedo ; the 
Spanish Butterwort, Pinguicula grandiflora ; and 
the Pyrenean Cress, Arabis ciliata. Two rare 
ferns are also found in this region very cha- 
racteristic of warm climates, and found more 
abundantly in Spain, the Azores, and Madeira, viz. 
Adiantum Capillus-veneris, the true Maiden Hair 
Fern, which grows abundantly and luxuriantly on 
the cliffs of Inishmore, one of the south Isles of 
Arran off Galway Bay, and in the clefts of that 
remarkable formation known as the " limestone 
pavement " in the west of county Clare, Ireland ; 
and the lovely transparent Bristle Fern, Tricho- 
manes radicans, with which visitors to the Lakes of 
Killarney are familiar. A large number of lichens 
and mosses also occur in this part of Ireland, which 
are found nowhere else in Britain, and are either 
identical with, or closely allied to, species in 
southern latitudes. Among these may be men- 
tioned the splendid broad-leaved Sticta (S. Ma- 
crophylla), which grows on shady rocks beside the 
Turk cascade, Killarney, and on Cromagloun Moun- 
tain. It is found nowhere else in Europe ; being 
a tropical species peculiar to the Mauritius, and to 
South America, where it grows on the trunk of the 



I.] PECULIAR IRISH PLANTS. 39 

Peruvian bark-tree. On the maritime rocks in the 
south-west of Ireland has been found sparingly the 
famous Orchil or Canary-weed {Roccella tinctorid), 
a lichen once imported extensively from the Canary 
Islands for dyeing purposes, and worth about £200 
a ton. Of the Hepaticae or Scale-mosses, the 
beautiful and very distinct species Jungermannia 
HutchinsicB, the J. Mackaii^ J. Woodsii, and J. 
laxifolid) are almost wholly confined to the south 
of Ireland. Of true mosses, the Hypnum demissum, 
distinguished for its glossy slender habit and com- 
pact manner of growth, grows in the woods of 
Cromagloun Mountain, near the Upper Lake of 
Killarney ; while the two remarkable Hookerias — 
H. Icete-virens and H. splachnoides, are found at 
O'Sullivan's Cascade, and Turk Waterfall, and 
on moist inclined faces of rocks on the side of Turk 
Mountain, Killarney. All these mosses belong to 
the flora of the Pyrenees, where they are more 
abundant and luxuriant than in Ireland. Along 
with this peculiar inland vegetation several species 
of sea-weeds are found on the western and south- 
western shores of Ireland, which are common in 
the south-west of Europe. The question occurs, 
How did these Spanish and south European plants 
find their way from the one region to the other? 
No existing marine currents could have effected the 
distribution ; and had the atmosphere been the 
means of diffusing them, we should have expected 
to find intermingled with the heaths and saxi- 
frages of Ireland, which we do not, the peculiar 



40 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

composite plants with winged seeds which are 
associated with them on the mountains of Spain. 
We are shut up then to the conclusion that Spain 
and Ireland were formerly united, and that the plants 
in question migrated before the two countries be- 
came separated from each other. Abundant geo- 
logical evidence exists of this anterior union of Ire- 
land and Spain at the end of the Miocene epoch. 
A vast continent extended westward from the 
Mediterranean beyond the Azores ; and the semi- 
circular belt of gulf-weed, called the Sargassum Sea, 
ranging between the 15 th and 45 th degrees of north 
latitude, remaining constant in its position, is sup- 
posed to mark the ancient coast-line of this sub- 
merged continent. Over this continuous dry land, 
extending from the province of Munster beyond the 
Canaries, flourished a rich and peculiar flora of the 
true Atlantic type. The intermediate links of the 
floral chain have been lost by the destruction of 
the land on which they grew ; but on the opposite 
shores of the Bay of Biscay, separated by hundreds 
of miles, the ends of the chain still exist, amid 
the wilds of Killarney and the mountain valleys 
of Asturias. 

In connection with the floral and geological facts 
regarding this continent of Atlantis, a very remark- 
able ancient tradition may be mentioned. In the 
Timseus, a myth of epic magnificence, Plato relates 
an incident which had been told him in his child- 
hood by his grandfather Critias : " Solon was my 
master. Now Solon had travelled and resided in 






I.] CONTINENT OF ATLANTIS. 41 

Egypt ; whence he brought back 'philosophical and 
political information, which he taught the Greeks. 
He learned science from the priests of Sais, a town 
in the Delta, where one of the priests who was 
learned in the science of history said to him, ' O 
Solon ! Solon ! you Greeks are as yet but children, 
and know not the history of Egypt. But we pre- 
serve in our sacred books a written history of more 
than nine thousand years ! You know only of one 
deluge, but it was preceded by many others. 
Athens, which you believe to be new, is very 
ancient ; and I will tell you how your Greece 
preserved to us Egyptians our liberty by resisting 
the enormous forces which came from the shores 
of the sea of Atlantis. This sea at that time 
surrounded an island not far from the Pillars of 
Hercules, and larger than Asia and Libya put 
together. Between it and the continent were some 
smaller islands. This gigantic country was called 
Atlantis. It was densely peopled, and very pros- 
perous, governed by powerful kings who seized 
the whole of Libya as far as Egypt, and of Europe 
as far as the country of the Tyrrhenians ; they 
reduced all the nations on this side of the Pillars 
of Hercules to slavery. The ancient Greeks then 
rose up, defeated them and delivered Egypt from 
slavery. But a still greater misfortune awaited 
the Atlantis ; for at that time, when there were 
earthquakes and inundations, the island was swal- 
lowed up. The inhabitants of the island, which 
was larger than Europe and Asia together, dis- 



42 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

appeared in a single night. This is why the sea 
is not navigable, on account of the shoals formed 
by the submerged land.'" Of this vast Atlantic 
continent, Madeira, the Azores, and the Canaries 
are fragments ; and the flora and fauna of these 
islands would seem to indicate a continuous con- 
nection of dry land between Europe and America, 
for they partake largely of the characteristics of 
the old and new worlds. The ichthyology of the 
Canaries resembles more that of the east coast of 
America than that of the Mediterranean and 
African coasts. Many of the plants of the Canaries 
are also of an American type ; while others are 
found in the Asturias and the west of Ireland, and 
others still are identical with the plants of Sicily and 
Syria. The whole coleopterous fauna of Madeira 
and of all the Fortunate Isles is very peculiar. 
The type of the land-shells is also as remarkable 
as that of the insects. And both indicate that these 
islands are mountain-tops of the submerged At- 
lantic continent, preserving a few relics of a fauna 
once very extensive and varied. The Sisyrhinchmm 
anceps, Naias flexilis^ and Eriocaidon septangulare^ 
which occur in Ireland, point unmistakeably to 
a former connection with America. Along with 
these remains of the flora and fauna of the ancient 
Atlantic continent, we have in Spain the existence 
of the Eskuara or Basque language in the valleys 
of the Pyrenees, whose nearest affinities are the 
polysynthetic languages of ancient Peru and Mexico, 
inasmuch as like them, and them only, it habitually 



I.] THE BASQUE LANGUAGE. 43 

forms its compounds by the elimination of certain 
radicals in the simple words. The hypothetical 
continent of Atlantis might probably explain this 
curious anomaly in the distribution of languages, 
as well as solve some other puzzling ethnological 
problems, such as the remarkable resemblance 
in physical appearance, manners and customs, 
sculpture and pottery, and the arts of life, and, 
above all, in the mode of embalming and mum- 
mifying the dead, between the ancient Egyptians, 
the extinct Guanches of the Archipelagos of the 
Canaries and Azores, and the aboriginal inhabit- 
ants of Mexico and Peru, pointing irresistibly to 
a common ■ origin. Indeed obscure traditions im- 
plying that America was once united with Europe 
and Africa are said still to exist among the Ame- 
rican -Indians. But into these questions, asso- 
ciated with the pedigree of the London Pride, I 
cannot here enter. What has been already said 
ought to redeem this homely plant from its ordinary 
insignificance, and invest it with deeper interest as 
the oldest plant now growing in the British Isles, 
and one of the last survivors of the flora of the 
ancient Atlantic continent. 

The history of the saxifrages which grow on 
the Highland hills is scarcely less remarkable — 
only that they are of Arctic instead of Atlantic 
origin, and were introduced into this country 
during the subsequent glacial period, when the 
northern hemisphere was greatly refrigerated by 
extensive changes of land and water. No less 



44 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

than seven different species are found on the 
Scottish mountains, growing indiscriminately at 
various altitudes, from the base to the highest 
summits, on the moist banks of Alpine streams, 
as well as on bleak exposed rocks where there 
is hardly a particle of soil to nourish their 
roots, and over which the wind drives with the 
force of a hurricane. The rarest of these saxi- 
frages is the 5. cemua, found nowhere else in 
Britain than on the extreme top of Ben Lawers, 
where it seldom flowers, but is kept in existence, 
propagated from generation to generation by means 
of viviparous bulbs, in the form of little red grains 
produced in the axils of the small upper leaves. 
It resembles the common meadow saxifrage in 
the shape of its leaves and flower so closely that, 
although the viviparous bulbs of the one are pro- 
duced at the junction of the leaves with the stem, 
and those of the other at the root, Bentham con- 
siders it to be merely a starved Alpine variety. 
Be this as it may, it preserves its peculiar cha- 
racters unaltered, not only within the very narrow 
area to which it is confined in Britain, but 
throughout the whole Arctic Circle, where it has 
a wide range of distribution. It is met with in 
a few places in Switzerland ; and it also occurs, 
although very sparingly, in the Tyrol, in Carinthia, 
in Styria, and in Transylvania. So frequently 
within the last sixty years have specimens been 
gathered from the station on Ben Lawers which, 
unfortunately, every botanist knows well, that only 



I.] PURPLE SAXIFRAGE. 45 

a few individuals are now to be seen at long inter- 
vals, and these exceedingly dwarfed and deformed. 
On no less than twenty-six different occasions I 
have examined it there, and been grieved to mark 
the ravages of ruthless collectors. I fear much that, 
at no distant date, the most interesting member 
of the British flora will disappear from the only 
locality known for it in this country. After having 
survived all the storms and vicissitudes of count- 
less ages, historical and geological, to perish at last 
under the spud of the botanist, were as miserable 
an anti-climax in its way as the end of the soldier 
who had gone through all the dangers of the 
Peninsular ' war, and was killed by a cab in the 
streets of London. 

The loveliest of the whole tribe is the purple 
saxifrage, which, fortunately, is as common as it is 
beautiful. It grows in the barest and bleakest 
spots on the mountains of England and Wales, as 
well as those of the Highlands, creeping in dense 
straggling tufts of hard wiry foliage over the arid 
soil, profusely covered with large purple blossoms, 
presenting an appearance somewhat similar to, but 
much finer than, the common thyme. It makes 
itself so conspicuous by its brilliancy that it cannot 
fail to be noticed by every one who ascends the 
loftier hills in the appropriate season. It is the 
avant-courier of the Alpine plants — the primrose, 
so to speak, of the mountains — blooming in the 
blustering days of early April ; often opening its 
rosy blooms in the midst of large masses of snow. 



46 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

And well is it entitled to lead the bright array of 
Flora's children, which, following the march of the 
sun, bloom and fade, one after the other, from 
April to October, and keep the desolate hills con- 
tinually garlanded with beauty. It is impossible 
to imagine anything fairer than a combination of 
the soft curving lines of the pure unsullied snow, 
with the purple blooms rising from its cold em- 
brace, and shedding over it the rosy reflected light 
of their own loveliness. I remember being greatly 
struck with its beauty several years ago in a lonely 
corrie far up the sides of Ben Cruachan. That 
w r as a little verdant oasis hid amid the surround- 
ing barrenness like a violet among its leaves — one 
of the sweetest spots that ever filled the soul of 
a weary careworn man with yearning for a long 
repose ; walled round and sheltered from the winds 
by a wild chaos of mountain ridges, animated by 
the gurgling of many a white Alpine rill descend- 
ing from the cliffs, carpeted with the softest and 
mossiest turf, richly embroidered with rare moun- 
tain flowers, with a very blaze of purple saxifrage. 
I saw it on a bright quiet summer afternoon, when 
the lights and shades of the setting sun brought 
out each retiring beauty to the best advantage. 
It was just such a picture as disposes one to think 
with wonder of all the petty meannesses and am- 
bitions of conventional life. We feel the insig- 
nificance of wealth, and the worthlessness of fame, 
when brought face to face with the purity and 
beauty of nature in such a spot. How trifling are 



I.] CORRIE ON BEN CRUACHAN 47 

the incidents which in such a scene arrest the 
attention and fix themselves indelibly in the mind, 
to be recalled long afterwards, perhaps in the 
crowded city and in the press of business, when 
the graver matters of every-day life that have 
intervened are utterly forgotten ! High up among 
the cliffs, round which a line of braided clouds, 
softer and fairer than snow, clings motionless all 
day long, rises at intervals the mellow bleat of 
a lamb, deepening the universal stillness by con- 
trast, and carrying with it wherever it moves the 
very centre and soul of loneliness. A muir-cock 
rises suddenly from a grey hillock beside you, 
shows for a- moment his glossy brown plumage 
and scarlet crest, and then goes off like the rush 
of an ascending sky-rocket, with his startling 
kok-kok-kok sounding fainter and fainter in the 
distance. Or perhaps a red deer wanders un- 
expectedly near you, gazes awhile at your motion- 
less figure with large inquiring eyes, and ears 
erect, and antlers cutting the blue sky like the 
branches of a tree, until at last, wearied by its 
stillness, and almost fancying it a vision, you raise 
your arm and give a shout, when away it flies in 
a series of swift and graceful bounds through the 
shadow of a cloud resting upon a neighbouring 
hill, and transforming it for a moment into the 
sknilitude of a pine-forest, over its rocky shoulder, 
away to some lonely far-off mountain spring, that 
wells up perhaps where human foot had never 
trodden. 



48 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Speaking of springs, there is no feature in 
Alpine scenery more beautiful than the wells and 
streamlets which make every hill-side bright with 
their sunny sparkle and musical with their liquid 
murmur ; and there are no spots so rich in moun- 
tain-plants as their banks. Trace them to their 
source, high up above the common things of the 
world, and they will be seen to form a crown of 
joy to the bare granite rocks, diffusing around 
them beauty and verdure like stars brightening 
their own rays. A fringe of deeply-green moss 
clusters round their edges, not creeping and lean- 
ing on the rock, but growing erect in thick tufts 
of fragile and slender stems. Clouds of golden 
confervae, like the most delicate floss-silk, float in 
the open centre of clear water, the ripple of which 
gives motion and quick play of light and shade 
to their graceful filaments. The Alpine Willow- 
herb bends its tiny head from the brink, to 'add 
its rosy reflection to the exquisite harmony of 
colouring in the depths ; the rock Veronica forms 
an outer fringe of the deepest blue ; while the 
little Moss Campion enlivens the decomposing 
rocks in the vicinity with a continuous velvet 
carpeting of the brightest rose-red and the most 
brilliant green. The indescribable loveliness of 
this glowing little flower strikes every one who 
sees it for the first time on the mountains speechless 
with admiration. Imagine cushions of tufted moss, 
with all the delicate grace of its foliage, miracu- 
lously blossoming into myriads of flowers, rosier 



I.] AN ALPINE STREAM. 49 

than the vermeil hue on beauty's cheek, or the 
cloudlet that lies nearest the setting sun, crowding 
upon each other so closely that the whole seems 
an intense floral blush, and you will have some 
faint idea of its marvellous beauty. A sheet of 
it, three summers ago, on one of the Westmoreland 
mountains, measured five feet across, and was one 
solid mass of colour. We have nothing to com- 
pare with it among Lowland flowers. Following 
the course of the sparkling stream from this en- 
chanted l^nd, it conducts us down the slope of 
the hill to beds of the mountain Avens, decking 
the dry and stony knolls on either side with its 
downy procumbent leaves and large white flowers, 
more adapted, one would suppose, to the shelter 
of the woods than the bleak exposure of the 
mountain side. Farther down the declivity, where 
the stream, now increased in size, has scooped out 
for itself a deep rocky channel, which it fills from 
side to side in its hours of flood and fury — hours 
when it is all too terrible to be approached by 
mortal footsteps — we find the mountain Sorrel 
hanging its clusters of kidney-shaped leaves and 
greenish rose-tipped blossoms — a grateful salad — 
from the beetling brows of the rocks ; while, on 
the drier parts, we observe immense masses of the 
rose-root Stonecrop, whose native name is Lus-nan- 
laoigh, growing where no other vegetation save the 
parti-coloured nebulae of lichens could exist. This 
cactus-like plant is furnished with thick fleshy 
leaves, with few or no evaporating pores, which 

E 



50 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

enable it to retain the moisture collected by its 
large, woody, penetrating root, and thus to endure 
the long- continued droughts of summer, when 
the stream below is shrunk down to the green 
gleet of its slippery stones, and the little Naiad 
weeps her impoverished urn. It ,grows on the 
rocky sea-shores of Islay and Rum ; and through- 
out the Hebrides is used as a kitchen-herb. Fol- 
lowing the stream lower down, we come to a 
more sheltered and fertile region of the moun- 
tain, where pool succeeds pool, clear and deep, in 
which you can see the fishes lying motionless, or 
darting away like arrows when your foot shakes 
the bank or your shadow falls upon the water. 
There is now a wide level margin of grass on either 
side, as smooth as a shaven lawn ; and meandering 
through it, little tributary rills trickle into the 
stream, their marshy channels edged with rare 
Alpine rushes and carices, and filled with great 
spongy cushions of red and green mosses, enlivened 
by the white blossoms of the starry saxifrage. The 
vS\ aizoides grows everywhere around in large beds 
richly covered with yellow flowers, dotted with 
spots of a deeper orange. This lovely species 
descends to a lower altitude than any of its con- 
geners, and may be called the golden fringe of 
the richly-embroidered floral mantle with which 
Nature covers the nakedness of the higher hills. 
It blooms luxuriantly among a whole host of 
moorland plants, sufficient to engage the untir- 
ing interest of the botanist throughout the long 



I.] PLANTS OF THE ALPINE STREAM. 51 

summer day. Soft plumy tufts of the Spignel or 
Meu (Meutn Athamanticum) an Alpine umbellifer, 
grow on the sandy margin of the stream. The 
whole plant exhales a strong peculiar piggish 
odour, like that broad-leaved species of St. John's 
Wort known as the Tutsan. The long roots ? 
clothed with dense grey fibres, have a pungent 
aromatic taste and excellent carminative proper- 
ties. Made up into bundles they used to be sold 
at Highland markets for a half-penny each, under 
the name of Muichionn. The curious sundew, 
a vegetable spider, lies in wait among the red 
elevated moss tufts, to catch the little black flies 
in the deadly embrace of its viscid leaves ; the 
bog asphodel stands near, with its sword-shaped 
leaves and golden helmet, like a sentinel guarding 
the spot ; the grass of Parnassus covers the moist 
greensward with the bright sparkling of its autumn 
snow; while the cotton grass — Chana-nan-sleibh 
of the Highland bards, a favourite metaphor — 
waves on every side its downy plumes in the 
faintest breeze. Binding the soft mossy sward 
in myriads, like upholsterers' knots in a cushion, 
the yellow tufts of the butterwort (Pinguicula 
vulgaris) send up each its solitary violet-like flower 
on a long stalk. Its leaves glisten with a peculiar 
viscous substance which attracts flies, like the 
sundew. Under the name of Brogan-na-cuaig, 
or Cuckoo's-shoes, it used to be employed by 
Highlanders in their mountain chalets to give 
milk the consistency of cream and to increase 

E 2 



52 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the deposit of butter. Down from this flowery 
region the stream flows with augmented volume, 
bickering over the shingle with a gay poppling 
sound, and leaving creamy wreaths of winking 
foam between the moss-grown stones that pro- 
trude from its bed. It laves the roots of the 
crimson heather and the palmy leaves of the lady- 
fern. The sunbeams gleam upon its open face 
with " messages from the heavens ; " the rainbow 
arches its waterfalls ; the panting lamb comes to 
cool its parched tongue in its limpid waters ; the 
lean blue heron, with head and bill sunk on its 
breast, stands motionless in its shallows watching 
for minnows all the long dull afternoon ; while 
the dusky ousel flits from stone to stone in all 
the fearless play of its happy life. Hurrying 
swiftly through the brown heathy wastes that 
clothe the lower slopes, it lingers awhile where 
the trembling aspen and the twinkling birch and 
the rugged alder weave their leafy canopy over 
it, freckling its bustling waves with ever-varying 
scintillations of light and shade ; pauses to water 
the crofter's meadow and cornfield, and to supply 
the wants of a cluster of rude moss-grown huts 
on its banks, which look as if they had grown 
naturally out of the soil ; and then, through a 
beach of snow-white pebbles, it mingles its fretting 
waters in the blue profound peace of the loch. 
Such is the bright and varied course of the Alpine 
stream, with its floral fringe ; and from its fountain 
to its fall it is one continuous many-linked chain 



I.] SUMMIT OF BEN NEVIS. 53 

of beauty — an epic of Nature, full of the richest 
images and the most suggestive poetry. 

Very few of the true Alpine plants grow on the 
actual summits of the Highland hills ; and this 
circumstance appears to be due not so much to the 
cold— for the same plants are most abundant and 
most luxuriant throughout the whole Polar zone, 
where the mean annual temperature is far below 
the freezing point, whereas that of the Highland 
summits is 3 or 4 above that point — but to their 
want of shelter from the prevailing storms, and the 
generally unfavourable geological structure of the 
spot. The highest point of Ben Nevis, for in- 
stance, is so thickly macadamized with large masses 
of dry red granite, that there is hardly room for 
the tiniest wild flower to strike root in the soil. It 
looks like the battle-ground of the Titans, or a 
gigantic heap of scoriae cast out from Vulcan's fur- 
nace. It is impossible to imagine, even in the Polar 
regions, any spot more barren and leafless. The 
plants of the super- Arctic and mid-Arctic zones, 
which should be found there owing to its height, 
are therefore obliged to accommodate themselves 
in the infer-Arctic zone, where the necessary con- 
ditions of soil and moisture exist. One of the two 
plants characteristic of the highest zone — viz. the 
Saxifraga rivularis — occurs on the hill, but con- 
siderably below its normal limits. It grows at an 
altitude of 3000 feet, in a spot irrigated, while the 
plant is in flower, by water trickling from the melt- 
ing snow above. The summit of Ben-y-gloe, rising 



54 HOLIDAYS 'ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

to a height of 3900 feet in the north-east corner 
of Perthshire, is also covered with enormous piles 
of snowy gneiss — like the foundation of a ruined 
city — in some places ground into powder by the 
disintegrating effects of the weather, and in others 
occurring in the shape of large blocks thrown 
loosely above each other, so sharp and angular 
that it is one of the most difficult and fatiguing 
tasks imaginable to scramble over the ridge to the 
cairn which crowns the highest point. When sur- 
veyed from below, the peak has a singularly bald 
appearance, scarred and riven by numberless land- 
slips, and the dried-up beds of torrents, and scalped 
by the fury of frequent storms ; and a nearer in- 
spection proves it to be as desolate and leafless 
as the sands of Sahara. On the top of Ben-Muich- 
Dhu, though very broad and massive, as beseems 
a mountain covering a superficial basis of nearly 
forty miles in extent, the only flowering plants 
which occur are, strange to say, those which are 
found in profusion even at the lowest limits of 
Alpine vegetation on the English hills. The last 
time I visited it I observed only seven flowering 
plants near the cairn on the summit, most of which 
were sedges and grasses. Among the patches of 
dry detritus between the thin slabs of red granite 
with which the highest ridge is paved, may be 
seen a scanty sward composed of Luzula arcnata, 
Festuca vivipara, Juncus trifidus, Carex rigida and 
very stunted specimens of Salix herbacea. The 
mossy Campion, however, amply compensated me 



I.] MOSSY CYPHEL. 55 

for the absence of the other Alpines by the abun- 
dance and brilliancy of its rosy flowers. The 
finest and most abundant plants are found along 
the course of a lovely stream that rises on the 
brow of the ridge and falls into Loch Etachan, 
marking its course all the way by dense cushions 
of moss of the most vivid green, chocolate, and 
claret colours, contrasting in a very striking manner 
with the utter barrenness and desolation every- 
where else. 

The same remarks apply to nearly all the High- 
land hills. There are only five plants which — 
though sometimes descending to lower altitudes, 
one or two of them even to the level of the sea- 
shore on the hills fronting the coast in the north- 
west of Scotland — are invariably found on the 
summits of all the ranges that are more than 3000 
feet high. These plants are the mossy Campion, 
the Dwarf willow, the procumbent Sibbaldia, the 
little dusky-brown Gnaphalium, and the curious 
Cherleria or mossy cyphel. This last little plant 
forms an anomaly in the distribution of our Alpine 
flora. It is very abundant in the subnival region 
of the Swiss Alps, growing on the larger groups 
of mountains, from an altitude of 8000 to 15000 
feet. It forms one of the most conspicuous of the 
forty plants found on the far-famed "Jardin de 
la Mer de Glace " at Chamouni, described in 
Murray's Handbook as "an oasis in the desert, an 
island in the ice, a rock which is covered with a 
beautiful herbage, and enamelled in August with 



56 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

flowers. This is the Jardin of this palace of 
nature ; and nothing can exceed the beauty of 
such a spot, amidst the overwhelming sublimity of 
the surrounding objects — the Aiguille of Charmoz, 
Bletier, and the Geant," &c. This highly-coloured 
description is, however, a mere euphemism, for in 
reality the so-called garden is only a collection 
of huge boulders protruding out of the glacier, 
lying on a sheltered southern slope, and covered 
principally with lichens and plants, whose dull 
insignificant appearance would not attract the least 
notice elsewhere 1 . Although not very rare on 
the highest Scottish mountains, the Cherleria does 
not extend farther north — thus offering a very 
striking exception to the usual derivation of our 
mountain flora. It may either have emigrated 
northwards from the Alps during the glacial epoch, 
or it may be regarded as a sporadic species, de- 
pending upon local conditions for its maintenance. 
From its peculiar and hardy appearance, I would 
almost hazard the opinion that it is older than 
any of the other Alpine plants, that it existed on 
the British hills before the migration of the Scan- 
dinavian flora, and that the Breadalbane mountains 
form its original centre, from which it has been 

1 Amongst the plants of the Jardin may be mentioned the Linaria 
alpina, Geum montanum, Potendlla aurea, Euphrasia officinalis, Gen- 
tiana acatdis, G. punctata, G. verna, G. purpurea, Ranunculus glacialis, 
R. alpestris, Potendlla alpestris, Luzula lutea, Erigeron alpinum, 
E. utiiflorum, Veronica officinalis, V. alpina, V. bellidioides, Tussilago 
alpina, Primula viscosa, Saxifraga bryoides. 



I.] BEN LAWERS. 57 

distributed southwards over the Pyrenees and the 
Swiss Alps. The last inference is warranted by- 
its extraordinary luxuriance on Ben Lawers. It 
has nothing to boast of in the shape of flowers, 
the sharpest eyes being hardly able to detect the 
minute greenish petals and stamens among the 
tufted moss-like foliage. It is impossible to convey 
the impression of special adaptation which one 
glance at the plant, in its bare and sterile habitat, 
cannot fail to produce. Its long, tough, woody 
root penetrates deeply the stony soil, so that it is 
with difficulty a specimen can be detached ; and 
so hardy is its nature that it flourishes green and 
luxuriant under the chilling pressure of huge 
masses of snow, and under the unmitigated glare 
of the scorching summer sun. 

Of all the British mountains, Ben Lawers is the 
richest in rare and interesting Alpine species. This 
hill, which maybe called the Mecca of the botanist, 
as every neophyte who aspires to the honours of 
his science must pay a visit to its rugged cliffs, 
occupies very nearly the centre of Scotland. It 
rises in a pyramidal form from the north shore of 
Loch Tay, upwards of 4000 feet above the level 
of the sea, and commands from its summit, on a 
clear day, an uninterrupted view unparalleled in the 
British islands for variety, sublimity and extent. 
Though separated from the surrounding mountains 
by two torrents which flow through deep depres- 
sions on its eastern and western sides, it forms with 
them an immense continuous range, upwards of 



58 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. ■ [chap. 

forty miles in length, ten in breadth, and of an 
average altitude of 3000 feet. On this lofty pla- 
teau, known as the Breadalbane chain, which is the 
most uniformly and extensively elevated land in 
Britain, the different peaks of Maelghyrdy, Craig- 
calleach, Ben Lawers, &c, repose like a conclave 
of mighty giants, imparting a serrated appearance 
to the range indescribably wild and savage when 
wreathed with mist or cloud. The whole of this 
vast region is composed almost entirely of mica- 
ceous schist, interspersed here and there with veins 
of quartz, and containing not unfrequently those 
dark-brown crystals called garnets, which greatly 
enhance the sparkling lustre of the mica. This 
rock, it may be remarked, embraces within its 
course the finest and most celebrated scenery in 
the Highlands, and rises, besides the Breadalbane 
peaks, into such distinguished summits as Ben 
Voirlich, Ben Ledi, Ben Venue, Ben Lomond, 
and all the bold serrated ridges of Argyleshire 
and Inverness-shire. It is of a very soft and 
friable nature, and is easily weathered, forming 
on its surface a deep layer of rich soil, admirably 
adapted to the wants of an Alpine or Arctic 
vegetation. Being the prevailing formation in 
the Norwegian and Lapland mountains, as well 
as in the Arctic regions, it is obvious that the 
Scandinavian plants which emigrated southwards 
would find, wherever this rock cropped out suffi- 
ciently high above the surrounding surface, pecu- 
liarly favourable conditions for their growth. Hence 



I.] BREADALBANE MOUNTAINS. 59 

on all the micaceous rocks in this country, and 
even in the Swiss Alps, we find a greater variety 
and a richer luxuriance of Scandinavian forms 
than on any other geological formation. We are 
particularly struck with this when we compare 
the rich and varied Alpine vegetation of the 
Breadalbane mica schists with the generally meagre 
and stunted vegetation of the Braemar and Ben 
Nevis granites. 

The unusual fertility of the Breadalbane range 
must also be ascribed to geographical position, 
highly advantageous in a meteorological point of 
view. The south-west winds, which come loaded 
with moisture from the Atlantic, meet with this 
great ridge running along the west of Perthshire, 
high above the other ranges, and, rushing up its 
cooler sides, condense their vapours, disengage 
their latent heat, and produce that mild climate, 
with almost continual rain or drizzling mist, in 
which Alpine plants delight during the period of 
growth ; whereas to the Aberdeenshire mountains 
the same winds come deprived of their moisture, 
and bring dry, cold weather. The common species 
of plants which are found on every hill of sufficient 
altitude in Britain, and which constitute their sole 
Alpine flora, are not only more abundant in in- 
dividual forms on the Breadalbane mountains, but 
also attain more luxuriant proportions, so that 
they give a rich and beautiful appearance to the 
higher ranges in the glowing summer months ; 
while, as previously intimated, an unusually large 



60 HOLIDAYS OJV HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

proportion of plants is exclusively restricted to 
this chain. Nor is it merely in rare phanerogamous 
vegetation that these mountains are rich ; they 
also possess a singularly varied and peculiar crypt- 
ogamic flora, several species of which are found 
nowhere else. Most of these plants, may be found 
collected on the single peak of Ben Lawers ; and 
a botanist cannot spend a week more profitably 
and pleasantly than in exploring the huge sides 
and broad double summit of this hill. Every step 
leads to a botanical surprise, and almost every 
plant is either altogether new, or so rare and 
unfamiliar as to excite a thrill of gratification. 
If he has never before investigated Alpine vege- 
tation, and if he be at all an enthusiast in his 
pursuit, he will experience in the collection of these 
novelties and rarities some of the happiest mo- 
ments in his life, — moments worth years of arti- 
ficial excitement, banishing every sense of weari- 
ness and fatigue, and rendering, by the elevation 
of mind they produce, his perceptions of beauty 
in the scenery around more acute and delightful. 
These moments soon pass away, but they cease 
like the bubbling of a fountain, which leaves the 
waters purer for the momentary influence which 
had passed through them, — not like too many 
worldly joys, which ebb like an unnatural tide, 
and leave behind only loathsomeness and disgust. 
In the crevices of the highest rocks may be 
observed a curious lichen, called Verrucaria 
Hookeri, spreading over the blackened and har- 



I.] MOSSES AND LICHENS OF BEN LAWERS. 61 

dened turf in white turgid scales, which is quite 
different from any other lichen with which we are 
acquainted, and seems to be a special creation 
found nowhere else in the world. Curiously enough, 
there is associated with it a moss also peculiar 
to the spot, the Gymnostomum ccespititium^ which 
grows in dense brownish-green tufts, with nume- 
rous glossy capsules nestling among the leaves. 
The extreme rarity and isolation of these plants 
would almost warrant the inference, either that 
they are new creations which have not yet had 
time to secure possession of a wider extent of 
surface, or rather, perhaps, that they are aged 
plants, survivors of the original cryptogamic flora 
of the soil during the more recent geological 
epochs, which have lived their appointed cycle of 
life, and, yielding to the universal law of death, are 
about to disappear for ever. The fallen rocks in 
the crater-like hollow are covered with the dis- 
persed tumid yellowish white warts of the Lecanora 
friistnlosa^ — a lichen found nowhere else in Britain, 
and exceedingly rare in Norway. Associated with 
it is the dark grey Sqitamaria lencolepis^ which I 
have gathered upon decayed mosses in Norway ; 
and the Lecidea fusco lutea^ with its white thallus 
and orange brown shields. On the highest ridge 
of the mountain occurs, among the debris of rocks, 
the Draba repestris, a very small, insignificant- 
looking plant, but important as being one of the 
most Arctic and Alpine plants in Scotland. It is 
only found here and in one locality in Sutherland- 



62 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

shire, and is unknown on the continent of Europe. 
Beside it, on the eastern side, the Sagina nivalis 
or snowy pearlwort occurs abundantly. Passing 
down from the cairn that crowns the highest point 
of Ben Lawers, along the north-western shoulder 
of the hill, we are soon brought to- a stand by 
several lofty precipices. Descending one of these, 
we come to a small corrie ; and here, upwards of 
3600 feet above the level of the sea, we are fairly 
bewildered with the beauty, the variety, and the 
luxuriance of the Alpine plants which bloom on 
every side. All the ordinary species are here 
congregated in lavish profusion, protected by im- 
mense shaggy beds of rare Alpine mosses, and 
nourished by the incessant dripping from the rocks 
overhead. We observe among them a few dense 
tufts of the Alpine sandwort {Alsine rubella), 
and instantly we are down on our knees in the 
swamp to gather it, for one brief moment oblivious 
of the whole universe besides. Our prize has cer- 
tainly little to recommend it ; for beauty it can 
scarcely be said to possess, the chickweed of our 
gardens, to which it is closely allied, having fully 
as pretty a flower ; but it is remarkable for that 
which gives value to the diamond — its exceeding 
rarity — only one other station for it being known 
in Britain, viz. the exposed cliffs of Ben Hope 
in Sutherlandshire. It belongs eminently to the 
boreal or Arctic type of vegetation, penetrating 
very far north, but reaching its southern limit on 
Ben Lawers. 



l] the SNOWY GENTIAN. 63 

Scarcely has my enthusiasm had time to cool, 
when it is raised to a higher pitch, by seeing, 
in a cleft of the rock, the most celebrated of all 
our mountain flowers- — the tiny Gentiana nivalis, 
or snowy gentian. With immeasurable thank- 
fulness, and with a reverential and delicate touch, 
I pluck from the tiny clumps two specimens for 
myself, and two for favoured friends — no more ; 
for the genuine botanist has too great a regard for 
these interesting remnants of an almost extinct 
race — these little Aztecs of the flower world, which 
cling so tenaciously to Flora's skirts — to exter- 
minate them ruthlessly by taking more than he 
needs: If, humanly speaking, they are so precious 
in the eyes of their Creator, that He has taken such 
wonderful care to perpetuate them in these bleak 
spots, they ought surely to be invested with some- 
thing of a sacred character in our sight. What 
appeals so powerfully to the protection of man in 
the helpless form of the infant, ought to affect us 
in similar, though of course lesser degree, in the 
tenderness and fragility of these rare plants. The 
snowy gentian is the smallest of the Alpine flowers, 
usually averaging from half an inch to an inch in 
height, with a very minute blossom, forming a 
mere edge of deep blue, tipping the long calyx. 
Another station besides the Ben Lawers one has 
been found in a large corrie near the summit of 
Mael-nan-tarmonach, another peak of the same 
range, and also in the Caenlochan mountains, at 
the head of Glen Isla, where a porphyritic granite. 



64 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

rich in felspar, associated with a dark syenite, 
abounding in hornblende, is the prevailing rock. 
The Alps of Switzerland, however, seem to be the 
chosen haunt of this and all the rest of the gentian 
tribe. There it grows in profusion among a lovely 
sisterhood of gentians, imparting a blue, deep as 
that of the sky above, to the higher pasturages, 
and often hides its head on the dizzy ledges of 
tremendous precipices. In ascending the lofty 
peaks of the Jungfrau and Monte Rosa, the guides 
not unfrequently resort to the innocent artifice of 
endeavouring to interest the traveller in its beauty, 
to distract his attention from the fearful abysses 
which the giddy path overhangs. 

There is one flower found in Ben Lawers which 
alone is worth all the fatigue of the ascent. This 
is the Alpine forget-me-not {Myosotis alpestris). It 
is far lovelier than its sister of the valleys — the 
well-known flower of friendship and poetry — its 
flowers being larger, more numerous, and closely 
set, forming a dense coronet or clustered head, 
that looks like a carcanet of rich turquoises. It 
does not grow beside running brooks, or in marshy 
spots, like its lowland congener, but high up on the 
dizzy ledges of almost inaccessible cliffs, where no 
one but the prying naturalist would look for floral 
beauty. It occurs along with our Scottish Erigcron 
on the summit of the Mysian Olympus. Although 
somewhat abundant on the Swiss Alps, in Britain 
it is confined to the Breadalbane mountains, where 
it does not occur lower down than 3000 feet. On 



I.] ALPINE FORGET-ME-NOT. 65 

Ben Lawers it is especially abundant and luxuri- 
ant, crowning with a garland of large blue tufts 
the precipitous crags which jut out from the 
western side of the hill. Fortunately for the pre- 
servation of the plant, it is a hazardous undertak- 
ing to gather it there, for the rocks are from 300 
to 400 feet in perpendicular height, and one 
escapes from their ledges to a secure standing- 
place with much the same feelings that a man 
gets out of reach of a shell just about to explode. 
In that elevated spot the summer is far advanced 
before it ventures to put forth its delicate flowers, 
so that it escapes the howling winds and the tem- 
pestuous mists, and blooms in a calm and serene 
atmosphere. The perfume which it exhales is very 
volatile, being sometimes almost imperceptible, and 
at other times very strong, and suggestive of the 
honey smell of the clover fields left far below. 
This is almost the only British Alpine plant pos- 
sessed of fragrance ; whereas, on the Swiss Alps, 
the majority of species are odoriferous, — a circum- 
stance which adds largely to the inspiring influence 
of a ramble on those stupendous hills. The absence 
of scented species on our mountains seems to be 
owing to the dark cloudy atmosphere which almost 
always broods over them ; while their presence in 
such profusion on the Alps is, on the other hand, 
due to the cloudless skies and the bright sunshine 
peculiar to the south, as well as to the diminished 
pressure of the atmosphere ; for the most fragrant 
kinds seldom prosper below a certain elevation, 

F 



66 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

and when cultivated in gardens become nearly- 
scentless. There is no plant which recalls more 
forcibly the beautiful though hackneyed lines of 
Gray than the Alpine forget-me-not. But is it 
really true that it blushes unseen, and wastes its 
fragrance on the desert air? Who- are we, that 
we should arrogate to ourselves the right to call 
any existence vain and wasted that is wholly 
foeyond our use, and removed from our admiration? 
When shall we learn the humbling truth, con- 
stantly preached to us, that nature has not yet 
passed under our dominion, and that the smallest 
wild flower does not bloom for man, or any other 
creature, as its primary object. We have seen how 
little the admiration of man is regarded by nature, 
in the boundless prodigality with which she pours 
out her treasures in the loneliest and most desolate 
spots, remote from human habitations, and rarely, 
if ever, visited by human foot. There are many 
beautiful scenes left far off by themselves among 
the solitudes of the mountains, where, unseen and 
unknown to all human beings, living nature fails 
not, from the glad morn to the silent eve, to call 
up all those sublime pageants of daily recurrence 
which show forth the Creator's unchangeable glory, 
in her ever-changing loveliness ; where " the sunrise, 
unnoticed, clothes the mountains with regal robes 
of crimson and gold, and the red twilight, unad- 
mired, paints them in hues soft as those which 
pass over the cheek of the dying ; where grateful 
flowers, ungathered, breathe forth their odours like 






I.] ABERDEENSHIRE MOUNTAINS. 67 

the incense of a silent prayer, while answering dews 
descend, untainted, from the skies ; where storms, 
unfeared, come down in all their terror, and the 
unheard winds make a ceaseless wailing music 
over the lonely heights." And are we to think that 
all these beauties and wonders of creation are lost, 
because no mortal is at hand to look on them with 
his cold eye and thankless heart ? No ! better to 
suppose that purer and holier eyes than ours are 
for ever keeping watch in grateful admiration over 
the minutest flower, as over the remotest star, than 
to believe that the works of the Creator are ever 
without some one of His created beings to adore 
His majesty in their perfection. 

The Aberdeenshire mountains, from their great 
elevation and geographical position, lying in one of 
the directions taken by the Scandinavian flora in 
its descent to southern latitudes, exhibit a large 
proportion of Alpine forms, which might have been 
still larger were it not for unfavourable geological 
and climatal conditions. They possess, in great 
luxuriance, on the sides and summits of their high- 
est peaks, no less than three species of shrubby 
j lemon-coloured lichens highly peculiar to Iceland 
| and Lapland, and found nowhere else in this 
country. The restriction of these cryptogams to 
so narrow a corner of our island — considering the 
facility with which their light invisible spores may 
be disseminated by winds and waves, and their 
capacity of enduring the utmost extremes of temper- 
ature — can only be explained by the supposition 

F 2 



68 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

that the Cairngorm mountains first intercepted 
and, by a special adaptation of conditions, re- 
tained them. Of phanerogamous plants, one is 
confined to this district ; the Mulgedium alpinum 
— a large coarse plant of the lettuce tribe, with erect 
stems from two to three feet high, producing deep 
blue florets late in summer, which grows in moist 
rocky situations in Northern and Arctic Europe 
and Asia ; but in this country is restricted to the 
Loch-na-gar and Clova mountains, where it is 
rapidly disappearing. I gathered it several years 
ago in a locality where I believe it is now extinct, 
— the ledge of a sloping and rugged precipice on 
the north side of Ben-Muich-Dhu, down which 
a stream, rising in the upper ranges of the hill, 
falls in a succession of cascades for nearly 3000 
feet into the waters of Loch Avon. On the rocks 
of Loch-na-gar, overhanging a deep ravine, by 
which there is an ascent — though very laborious 
— to the summit, may be found Saxifraga rivu- 
laris and Phlemn alpinum ; while the rare Lycopo- 
dium annotinum, Cornus suecica^ and Drosera anglica 
may be gathered at their base in moist soil. 

On the Braemar mountains another Alpine plant 
of deeply interesting character is found. The 
Astragalus alpinus^ a species of vetch, crowns the 
summit of Craigindal, a hill about 3000 feet high, 
in the vicinity of Ben Avon, and Ben-na-bourd. It 
is confined almost exclusively to this neighbour- 
hood, and is found there in two or three localities 
at considerable distances from each other, but 



I.] OXYTROPIS CAMPESTRIS. 69 

characterised by the same geological formation, 
viz. a very pure, compact felspar. These moun- 
tains form the most southern limit of this plant. 
Tracing the Grampian chain for twenty or thirty 
miles south-east, until it forms the Clova group of 
hills, we find collected in that narrow space two 
other plants, each of which is restricted in its range 
to rocks of the same specific character, and there- 
fore comprised within a very limited area. One of 
these, the Oxytropis campestris — also a species of 
vetch, with pale yellow flower tinged with purple — 
is known by reputation, if not by sight, as one of 
the rarest of British plants, and therefore one of 
the most desirable acquisitions to the herbarium. 
Common on the mountain pastures and Alpine 
rocks in the Arctic regions of Europe, America and 
Siberia, it is confined in Britain to one cliff on the 
right-hand side of Glen Fee in Clova, severed from 
the surrounding precipices by two deep fissures, 
apparently the result of extensive atmospheric 
disintegration. This cliff is composed of micaceous 
schist, peculiarly rich in mica, though of a dark 
smoky colour ; and being of a soft and friable 
nature, easily decomposed by the weather, forms 
a loose, deep, and very fertile soil. In a large 
corrie on the left-hand side of Glen Fee occurs 
the Carex Grahami, which has only been met with 
in one other locality in the world. Carex Vahlii^ 
another very rare sedge, is found abundantly in 
the same corrie. This species is widely spread 
in Scandinavia, but occurs only in the Engadine 



70 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

and in South Tyrol on the Continent. The other 
plant alluded to, viz. the Lychnis alpina, the Alpen 
Lichtnelke of the Swiss, is also confined to a few 
isolated localities on the same range. It grows 
sparingly on the rocky table-land — about half an 
acre in extent — which crowns the summit of a hill 
called Little Gilrannoch, equidistant between Glen 
Isla and Glen Dole. It is intimately connected 
with the lithological character of its habitat, for 
in several places on this plateau it springs from 
little crevices where there is hardly a particle of 
soil to nourish its roots ; and its range of distri- 
bution extends only as far as the rock preserves 
its mineral character unchanged. This rock, 
which differs from the prevailing strata of the 
district, and from those in its immediate neigh- 
bourhood, is composed of compound felspar, very 
hard, and capable of resisting disintegration, In 
some places it is smooth and bare, like a pave- 
ment, and in others extremely corrugated and 
vitrified, as if it had undergone the action of fire. 
Though not found elsewhere in this country, the 
Alpine Lychnis has an extensive geographical range, 
being an Alpino-boreal plant, occurring both in 
Scandinavia and the Swiss Alps and Pyrenees. 

Caenlochan stands next, perhaps, to Ben Lawers 
in the number and interest of its Alpine rarities. 
On the summit of this range, close beside the 
bridle-path which winds over the heights from 
Glen Isla to Braemar, an immense quantity of the 
Highland azalea {Azalea procumbens) grows among 



I.] HIGHLAND AZALEA. 71 

the shrubby tufts of the crowberry ; and when in 
the full beauty of its crimson bloom, about the 
beginning of August, it is a sight which many 
besides the botanist would go far to see. It is the 
only plant on the Highland mountains that reminds 
us of the rhododendrons which form the floral glory 
of the Swiss Alps, and especially of the Sikkim 
Himalayas, one species of which only, the R. lap- 
ponicum, inhabits the eastern high grounds of 
Sweden and Norway. The Rhododendron family 
has long been known to possess poisonous proper- 
ties. The dreadful sufferings of the Greeks during 
the celebrated retreat of the Ten Thousand, were 
caused by eating the honey collected by bees from 
the flowers of the Azalea and the Rhododendron 
Ponticum in the neighbourhood of Trebizond. 
Cattle not unfrequently perish by feeding upon 
the foliage and flowers of Rhododendron Arboreum 
in the mountains of Kumaon. Dr. Hooker re- 
marks, on a tour while exploring the mountain- 
passes leading into Thibet, — 'Here are three 
Rhododendrons, two of them resinous and highly 
odoriferous ; and it is to the presence of these 
plants that the natives attribute the painful sen- 
sations experienced at great elevations. 5 The 
azalea of the Highland mountains is not free 
from the deleterious properties of its tribe. Cases 
of horses, sheep and goats, having been affected 
with violent vomiting and other painful symptoms 
of poisoning after feeding upon the young shoots 
of the plant have not unfrequently been recorded. 



72 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

And certain high hills where the plant occurs 
abundantly have an evil reputation in this respect ; 
it being considered dangerous to pasture sheep or 
goats upon them, or to allow horses to feed at will 
upon the herbage at certain elevations. The stu- 
pendous cliffs at the sources of the Isla, formed 
of friable micaceous schist, and irrigated by in- 
numerable rills, trickling from the melting snow 
above, are fringed with exceedingly rich tufts of 
Saussurea^ Erigeron, Sibbaldia^ Saxifraga nivalis, 
and whitened everywhere by myriads of Dryas 
octopetala and Alpine Cerastium. The scenery 
of this spot is truly magnificent. Huge mural 
precipices, between two and three thousand feet 
high, extend several miles on either side of a glen 
so oppressively narrow that it is quite possible to 
throw a stone from one side to the other. Dark 
clouds, like the shadows of old mountains passed 
away, continually float hither and thither in the 
vacant air, or become entangled in the rocks, in- 
creasing the gloom and mysterious awfulness of 
the gulf, from which the mingled sounds of many 
torrents, coursing far below, rise up at intervals 
like the groans of tortured spirits. A forest of 
dwarfed and stunted larches, planted as a cover 
for the deer, scrambles up the sides of the preci- 
pices, for a short distance, their ranks sadly thinned 
by the numerous landslips and avalanches from 
the heights above. This region is seldom frequented 
by tourists, or even by botanists, as it lies far away 
from the ordinary routes, and requires a special 



I.] MENZIESIA STAT I OX. 73 

visit. The late Professor Graham and the present 
accomplished Professor of Botany in the Edin- 
burgh University once spent, I believe, a fortnight 
in the shieling of Caenlochan, a lonely shepherd's 
hut at the foot of the range, built in the most primi- 
tive manner and with the rudest materials. They 
gathered rich spoils of Alpine plants in their daily 
wanderings among the hills, and so thoroughly in- 
doctrinated the shepherds and gamekeepers about 
the place in the nature of their pursuits, that they 
have all a knowledge of, and a sympathy with, the 
vasculum and herbarium, rare even in less secluded 
districts, though the schoolmaster is everywhere 
abroad. . Every one of them knows the ' Gimtion ' 
{Gentiana nivalis) and the 'Lechnis amena' [Lych- 
nis alpina), as they call them, as well as they know 
a grouse or sheep, and is proud at any time, without 
fee or reward, to conduct ' botanisses ' to the spots 
where these rarities are found. 

In the northern extremity of Perthshire, between 
Loch Rannoch and Loch Erricht, on the north- 
eastern brow of the mountain called the Sow of 
Atholl, is the well-known station for the very 
rare Menziesia or Phyllodoce ccerulea, a species 
of heath distinguished by its large blue bells. 
This treeless waste of elevated moorland, charac- 
terised by Maculloch as one of the most desolate 
regions in Europe, forgotten by nature, without 
a trace or a recollection of human life, once formed 
the site of the great Caledonian forest, which, in 
all probability, sheltered in its moist and shady 



74 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

recesses plants found nowhere else in Britain, and 
peculiar to the swampy forests of Norway and 
Lapland. Of this hyperborean vegetation, the 
beautiful Menziesia, the Azalea procumbens, Ly- 
copodium annotinum^ and the Riibits arcticus are 
now the sole surviving relics. They strikingly 
illustrate the influence of man in extirpating or 
limiting the distribution of plants, by levelling 
forests, draining marshes, and thus rendering a 
particular region unsuitable to the vegetation of 
an excessive climate, by introducing a more equable 
temperature, greater warmth in winter and greater 
cold in summer, than formerly prevailed. To the 
general naturalist this is one of the most interest- 
ing districts in Britain. About nine miles from 
Kinloch Rannoch, on the south side of the loch, 
there is a thick dark pine-forest, extending for 
about three miles, known as the Black Wood, 
which is also a relic of the great Caledonian 
forest • many of its trees being of great age, and 
so large as to require the outstretched arms of 
two men to span them. The timber is celebrated 
for its durability, and is valued at about ,£30,000. 
In the damp air of this forest, where there is an 
abundant supply of vegetable food in all stages 
of decay — favoured by the intense heat of summer 
and the long period of winter torpor — an astonish- 
ingly large number of subalpine insects occur, 
which are unknown in any other part of Britain, 
and some even yet undetected in any other 
country. It is, in fact, the paradise of the ento- 



I.] RaNNOCH INSECTS. 75 

mologist, for though the species are rare, the 
number of individuals is unusually large. Many 
of them are of considerable size, and possess very 
attractive colouring ; while others exhibit curious 
habits and modes of development. The Formica 
congerens builds its huge anthills of pine-needles 
here as in Norway. One of the most abundant 
insects in the place is the Longicorn beetle [Asti- 
nomus cedilis), which is known in Sweden, and, 
strange to say, in Rannoch also, as 'the timber- 
man,' on account of its frequenting the timber- 
cutting yards, and even the doorposts of the 
houses. Its horns are prodigiously long, about 
four times the length of its body, and remind 
one more of tropical insects than any similar de- 
velopment that occurs in this country. Trichins 
fasciatus y known to the inhabitants of the neigh- 
bouring village of Camachgouran as the 'bee- 
beetle,' from the resemblance of the velvety black 
bands on its yellow downy body to those of the 
common humble-bees, Bombus musconun and B. 
lapponum, found in its company, is also frequent 
in the neighbourhood. Erebia Cassiope, a species 
of rare butterfly, frequents the mountain side 
above the Black Wood ; while the fine moth 
Petasia nubeculosa, first discovered here as British, 
is found on the birch trees, when the snow is on 
the ground. The Polar dragon-flies ALschna borea- 
lis and Cordidia arctica occur of a large size. The 
delicate, flattened, beautifully reticulated bright 
red Dictyopterns Atirora, first discovered here, and 



76 



HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. 



[cm 



A P. 



not as yet found elsewhere in Britain, is very 
plentiful among rotten pine-chips under logs, and 
may be seen towards evening flying feebly in the 
depth of the forest. On the tops of the mountains 
round about occur under stones the rare Misco- 
dera arctica, the Alpine Nebria Gyllenhali^ and the 
Patrobus septentrionis. In short, upwards of a 
score of insects peculiar to the neighbourhood are 
essentially boreal forms. The parallelism between 
them and the insects of Norway and Sweden is 
of the closest character, and is thus a singular 
confirmation of the evidence afforded by some of 
the plants of the district that, in this corner of 
Britain, we have, in the relics of the Caledonian 
forest, the remains of a Scandinavian flora and 
fauna that once spread over the whole country. 

Although neither tree nor shrub is capable of 
existing on the mountain summits, we find several 
representatives there of the lowland forests. The 
Dwarf willow (Salix herbaceci) occurs on all the 
ridges, creeping along the mossy ground for a 
few inches, and covering it with its rigid shoots 
and small round leaves. It is a curious circum- 
stance, that a regular sequence of diminishing 
forms of the willow tribe may be traced in an 
ascending line, from the stately "siller saugh wi' 
downie buds," that so appropriately fringes the 
banks of the lowland river, up to the diminutive 
species that scarcely rises above the ground on 
the tops of the Highland hills. The dwarf birch, 
also, not unfrequently occurs in sheltered situa- 



I.] ALPINE FERNS. 11 

tions on the Grampians, among fragments of rocks 
thickly carpeted with the snowy tufts of the rein- 
deer moss. It is a beautiful miniature of its grace- 
ful sister, the queen of Scottish woods, the whole 
tree — roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, and 
fruit—being easily gummed on a sheet of common 
note-paper ; and yet it stands for all that the 
Esquimaux and Laplanders know of growing 
timber. In the Arctic plains the members of 
the highest botanical families are entirely super- 
seded by the lowest and least organized plants. 
Lichens and mosses are there not only more im- 
portant economically, but have greater influence 
in affecting the appearance of the scenery, than 
even willows and birches. 

Of ferns there are several very interesting species 
on the Highland mountains. A peculiar form 
occurs in sheltered places on most of the higher 
summits, which for a long time was supposed to 
be a variety of the common lady-fern. It is now 
ascertained to be a distinct species, and is called 
Polypodium alpestre ; its cluster of spores being 
naked and destitute of a covering in all the stages 
of growth. It is especially abundant on Loch-na- 
gar and the Cairngorm range, where it was dis- 
covered several years ago by Mr. Backhouse of 
York. On rocky slopes, at a height of about 
2000 feet, occurs the Alpine holly-fern {Polysti- 
chum Lonchitis), which is peculiarly adapted to 
its rigorous climate by its slow rigid habit of 
growth, and the persistency of its old fronds. On 



78 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Ben Lawers it is very abundant. The Woodsia 
hyperborea grows in small compact tufts on the 
ledges of almost inaccessible precipices. It is con- 
fined almost exclusively to the Breadalbane moun- 
tains, where it is found very sparingly indeed. 
But the rarest and most interesting' of all the 
Alpine ferns is the Cystopteris montana^ a large, 
handsome, much-divided species, bearing a con- 
siderable resemblance to the Polypodium calca- 
reum. It appears at the beginning of June, and 
fades early in August. It does not grow in crevices 
of rocks, like its congeners, but on the Alpine turf 
at a height of about 3000 feet. On Ben Lawers 
I once observed an extensive patch of it, contain- 
ing thousands of specimens, above the precipices 
on the west side of Loch-na-cat, near the station 
of Saxifraga rivularis ; but when I next visited 
the spot, the turf had been stripped off and the 
plant extirpated — not a vestige of it to be seen. 
It is fortunately, however, abundant on the wild, 
almost unknown, mountain plateaux which stretch 
from the head of Loch Tay to Loch Lomond — 
such as Benteskerny, Mael-nan-tarmonach, Mael- 
ghyrdy, Corry Dhuclair, &c. I gathered some fine 
specimens of it in a ravine while crossing the 
Wengern Alp, in Switzerland, some years ago ; and 
subsequently in the tremendous defile of the Nae- 
rodal, at the head of the Sogne Fjord in Norway. 

It would be improper not to notice very briefly 
the rich and varied cryptogamic vegetation which 
clothes the highest summits, and spreads, more 



I.] ALPINE MOSSES AND LICHENS. 79 

like an exudation of the rocks than the produce 
of the soil, over spots where no flowering plant 
could possibly exist. This vegetation is perma- 
nent, and is not affected by the changes of the 
seasons: it may, therefore, be collected at any 
time, from January to December. It is almost 
unnecessary to say, that the Alpine mosses and 
lichens are as peculiar and distinct in their cha- 
racter from those of the valleys as the Alpine 
flowers themselves. They are all eminently Arctic ; 
and, though they pccur very sparingly in scattered 
patches on the extreme summits of the Highland 
hills, they are the common familiar vegetation of 
the Lapland and Iceland plains, and cover Green- 
land and Melville Island with the only verdure 
they possess. Some of them are very lovely : as, 
for instance, the saffron SoloHna, which spreads 
over the bare earth, on the highest and most 
exposed ridges, its rich rosettes of vivid green 
above and brilliant orange below ; the daisy- 
flowered cup lichen, with its flligreed yellow stems, 
and large scarlet knobs ; and the geographical 
lichen, which enamels all the stones and rocks 
with its bright black and primrose-coloured mo- 
saic. Some are useful in the arts, as the Iceland 
moss, which occurs on all the hills, from an eleva- 
tion of 2000 feet, and becomes more luxuriant 
the higher we ascend. On some mountains it is 
so abundant that a supply sufficiently large to 
diet, medicinally, all the consumptive patients in 
Scotland could be gathered in a few hours. A few 



80 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

lichens and mosses, such as Hooker's Verrucaria. 
and Haller's Hypnmn, are interesting to the bo- 
tanist, on account of their extreme rarity and 
isolation. Some are interesting on account of their 
associations, as the Parmelia Fahhmensi$\ which 
was first observed on the dreary rocks and heaps 
of ore and debris near the copper mines of Fahlun, 
in Sweden — a district so excessively barren that 
even lichens in general refuse to vegetate there, 
yet inexpressibly dear to the great Linnaeus, be- 
cause there he wooed and won the beautiful 
daughter of the learned physician Moraeus. And 
the curious tribe of the Gyrophoras or Tripe de 
Roche lichens, looking like pieces of charred parch- 
ment, so exceedingly abundant on all the rocks, 
will painfully recall the fearful hardships and suf- 
ferings of Sir John Franklin and his party in the 
Arctic regions. It is a strange circumstance, by 
the way, that most of the lichens and mosses of 
the Highland summits are dark-coloured, as if 
scorched by the fierce unmitigated glare of the 
sunlight. This gloomy Plutonian vegetation gives 
a very singular appearance to the scenery, espe- 
cially to the top of Ben Nevis, where almost every 
stone and rock is blackened by large masses of 
Andre as ) Gyrophoras^ and Parmelias. 

The most marked and characteristic of all the 
cryptogamic plants which affect the mountain 
summits is the woolly-fringe moss, Trichostovium 
lanuginosum. This plant grows in the utmost 
profusion, frequently acres in extent, rounding the 



I.] " CRATER" OF BEN LAWERS. 81 

angular shoulders of the hills with a padding of 
the softest upholstery work of nature ; for which 
considerate service the botanist who has previously 
toiled up painfully amid endless heaps of loose stones, 
is exceedingly grateful. Growing in such abund- 
ance, far above the line where the higher social 
plants disappear, it seems a wise provision for the 
protection of the exposed sides and summits of 
the hills from the abrading effects of the storm. 
Snow-wreaths lie cushioned upon these mossy 
plateaux in midsummer, and soak them through 
with their everlasting drip, leaving on the surface 
from which they have retired the moss flattened 
and blackened as if burnt by fire. With this moss I 
have rather a curious association, with a description 
of which I shall wind up my desultory remarks, as 
a specimen of what the botanist may have some- 
times to experience in his pursuit of Alpine plants. 
Some years ago, while botanizing with a friend 
over the Breadalbane mountains, we found our- 
selves, a little before sunset, on the summit of 
Ben Lawers, so exhausted with our day's work 
that we were utterly unable to descend the south 
side to the inn at the foot. In these circumstances 
we resolved to bivouac on the hill for the night. 
On the higher ridge of the hill there is a strange 
rocky chasm which is popularly known as the 
" Crater," from its shape, not, of course, from any 
volcanic associations. It is strewn with rocks 
broken up into huge rectangular masses, lying 
loosely on the top of each other, and leaving large 

G 



82 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

cavernous openings between them. In the thin 
coating of dark micaceous soil covering the sides 
and bases of these fallen rocks, the Saxifraga 
cernua grows sparingly. It is a desolate weird- 
looking place, where, according to tradition, the 
" Lady of Lawers," who several hundred years ago 
lived at the foot of the hill, and had the reputation 
of being a witch and a prophetess, folded her cows 
at night, after feeding on the slopes of the Ben all 
day. In this crater-like hollow the sappers and 
miners of the Ordnance Survey, having to reside 
there for several months, had constructed square 
open enclosures, like sheepfolds, to shelter them 
from the northern blasts. In one of these roofless 
caravansaries we selected a spot on which to spread 
our couch. Fortunately, there w T as fuel con- 
veniently at hand in the shape of bleached frag- 
ments of tent-pins and lumps of good English 
coal, proving that our military predecessors had 
supplied themselves in that ungenial spot with a 
reasonable share of the comforts of Sandhurst and 
Addiscombe. My companion volunteered to kindle 
a fire, while I went in search of materials for an 
extemporaneous bed. As heather, which forms 
the usual spring-mattress of the belated traveller, 
does not occur on the summits of the higher hills, 
we were obliged to do without it — much to our 
regret ; for a heather-bed (I speak from experience) 
in the full beauty of its purple flowers, newly 
gathered, and skilfully packed close together, in 
its growing position, is as fragrant and luxurious 



I.] BIVOUAC ON TOP OF BEN LAWERS. 83 

a couch as any sybarite could desire. I sought 
a substitute in the woolly-fringe moss, which I 
found covering the north-west shoulder of the hill 
in the utmost profusion. It had this disadvantage, 
however, that, though its upper surface was very 
dry and soft, it was beneath, owing to its viviparous 
mode of growth, a mass of wet decomposing peat. 
My object, therefore, was so to arrange the bed 
that the dry upper layer would be laid uniformly 
uppermost ; but it was frustrated by the enthu- 
siasm excited by one of the most magnificent 
sunsets I had ever witnessed. It caused me com- 
pletely to forget my errand. The western gleams 
had entered into my soul, and etherealized me 
above all creature wants. Never shall I forget 
that sublime spectacle ; it brims with beauty even 
now my soul. Between me and the west, that 
glowed with unutterable radiance, rose a perfect 
chaos of wild, dark mountains, touched here and 
there into reluctant splendour by the slanting 
sunbeams. The gloomy defiles were filled with a 
golden haze, revealing in flashing gleams of light 
the lonely lakes and streams hidden in their bosom ; 
while, far over to the north, a fierce cataract that 
rushed down a rocky hill-side into a sequestered 
glen, frozen by the distance into the gentlest of all 
gentle things, reflected from its snowy waters a 
perfect tumult of glory. I watched in awe-struck 
hsilence the going down of the sun amid all this 
pomp, behind the most distant peaks — saw the 
few fiery clouds that floated over the spot where 

G 2 



84 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

he disappeared fade into the cold dead colour of 
autumn leaves, and finally vanish in the mist of 
even — saw the purple mountains darkening into 
the Alpine twilight, and twilight glens and streams 
tremulously glimmering far below, clothed with the 
strangest lights and shadows by the newly risen 
summer moon. Then, and not till then, did I 
recover from my trance of enthusiasm to begin in 
earnest my preparations for the night's rest. I 
# gathered a sufficient quantity of the moss to pre- 
vent our ribs suffering from too close contact with 
the hard ground ; but, unfortunately, it was now 
too daric to distinguish the wet peaty side from 
the dry, so that the whole was laid down in- 
discriminately. Over this heap of moss we spread 
a plaid, and lying down with our feet to the blazing 
fire, Indian fashion, we covered ourselves with 
another plaid, and began earnestly to court the 
approaches of the balmy god. Alas ! all our 
elaborate preparations proved futile ; sleep would 
not be wooed. The heavy mists began to de- 
scend, and soon penetrated our upper covering, 
while the moisture of the peaty moss, squeezed 
out by the pressure of our bodies, exuded from 
below ; so that between the two we might as well 
have been in " the pack " at Ben Rhydding. To 
add to our discomfort, the fire smouldered and 
soon went out with an angry hiss, incapable of 
contending with the universal moisture. It was 
a night in the middle of July, but there were 
refrigerators in the form of two huge masses of 



I.] COLD AND SLEEPLESSNESS. 85 

hardened snow on either side of us ; so the tem- 
perature of our bedchamber, when our warming- 
pan grew cold, may be easily conceived. For a 
long while we tried to amuse ourselves with the 
romance and novelty of our position, sleeping, as 
we were, in the highest attic of her Majesty's 
dominions, on the very top of the dome of Scot- 
land. We gazed at the large liquid stars, which 
seemed unusually near and bright ; not glimmer- 
ing on the roof of the sky, but suspended far down 
in the blue concave, like silver lamps. There were 
the grand old constellations, Cassiopeia, Auriga, 
Cepheus, each evoking a world of thought, and 
painting, as it were, in everlasting colours on the 
heavens the religion and intellectual life of Greece. 
Our astronomical musings and the monotonous 
murmurings of the mountain streams at last lulled 
our senses into a kind of doze, for sleep it could 
not be called. How long we lay in this un- 
conscious state we knew not, but we were suddenly 
startled out of it by the loud whirr and clucking 
cry of a ptarmigan close at hand, aroused perhaps 
by a nightmare caused by its last meal of crude 
whortleberries. All further thoughts of sleep were 
now out of the question ; so, painfully raising our- 
selves from our recumbent posture, with a cold 
grueing shiver, rheumatism racking in every joint, 
we set about rekindling the fire, and preparing 
our breakfast. In attempting to converse, we 
found, to our dismay, that our voices were gone. 
We managed, however, by the help of signs, and 



86 HO LI DA YS ON HIGH LANDS. 

a few hoarse croaks, to do all the talking required 
in our culinary conjurings ; and, after thawing 
ourselves at the fire, and imbibing a quantity of 
hot coffee, boiled, it may be remarked, in a tin 
vasculum, we felt ourselves in a condition to de- 
scend the hill. A dense fog blotted out the whole 
of creation from our view, except th'e narrow spot 
on which we, stood; and, just as we were about 
to set out, we were astonished to hear, far off 
through the mist, human voices shouting. While 
we were trying to account for this startling mystery 
in such an unlikely spot and hour, we were still 
more bewildered by suddenly seeing, on the brink 
of the steep rocks above us, a vague, dark shape, 
magnified by the fog into portentous dimensions. 
Here, at last, we thought, is the far-famed Spectre 
of the Brocken, come on a visit to the Scottish 
mountains. Another, and yet another appeared, 
with, if possible, more savage mien and gigantic 
proportions. We knew not what to make of it. 
Fortunately, our courage was saved at the critical 
moment by the phantoms vanishing round the 
rocks to appear before us in a few minutes real 
botanical flesh and blood, clothed, as usual, with 
an utter disregard of the aesthetics of dress. The 
enthusiasm of our new friends for Alpine plants 
had caused them to anticipate the sun, for it was 
yet only three o'clock in the morning. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE INTERMEDIATE OR HEATHER REGION. 

The botanist regards the rapid progress of agricul-* 
ture in these days with feelings somewhat akin to 
those which once convulsed the placid bosoms of 
the Lake poets at the ' prospect of that " insane 
substruction," a railway amid the beautiful solitudes 
of Windermere. He sees, with a sinking of the 
heart, which no hope of increased gain to the 
neighbouring gastric region can allay, the wave 
of cultivation stealthily creeping up the hill-side 
higher and higher with each yearly tide. The 
beautiful green knolls around which superstitious 
eyes used to see the fairies dancing in the mid- 
summer moonlight have been levelled and taken 
in as part of the surrounding cornfield. The grey 
Druidical stones which our ancestors reverently 
spared, and around which the most grasping farmer 
used to leave a broad margin of natural sward, 
have been blasted to macadamize a road or build 
a dyke, in defiance of the curse pronounced against 
those who should desecrate these old bones of an 
extinct faith ; and the ground on which they stood 
has been planted with potatoes or turnips. From 



88 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

this universal utilization of the soil the poet and 
painter have suffered, but not to the same extent 
as the botanist ; for, besides the loss of the beautiful 
and the picturesque, he has to deplore the gradual 
diminution of the number of his favourite wild 
flowers in this country. Meres and Lochs in which 
local aquatic plants luxuriated have been drained, 
woods have been cut down, and railways and high- 
roads carried through nooks that sheltered the last 
survivors of an ancient flora. For the extermina- 
tion of these interesting rarities no quantity of 
weeds introduced among seed from other countries 
can compensate. 

With these conservative instincts I deeply sym- 
pathise ; but I rejoice that, while some injury has 
been done in certain places to special studies, far 
more land has been left untouched than has been 
" improved." As ocular demonstration is more 
convincing than any amount of logical argument, 
let me ask the botanist who is groaning amid the 
wheat and turnip fields of the midland counties 
to accompany me to the top of a hill, say in 
the Highlands of Perthshire. From this superior 
standing-point let him look around, and he will 
be at once convinced of the utter groundlessness 
of his botanical fears. How vast the dominion 
of Nature ! How insignificant the portion that 
has been reclaimed ! For all the evidence of man's 
occupancy that appears within the boundless hori- 
zon, he might imagine himself the solitary tenant 
of an alien world, monarch of all he surveys. A 



II.] VASTNESS OF WASTE LANDS. 89 

few spots of pale green hardly seen among the 
heather ; a narrow strip of cultivated valley ob- 
scured by the shadow of overhanging mountains ; 
the silver thread of a stream running through a 
thin fringe of verdure ; and, all around, the brown 
interminable wastes lengthening as he gazes, until 
their wild billows subside on the blue shore of the 
distant horizon ! This is what he sees, and a more 
humbling spectacle I cannot imagine. The power- 
lessness of man's efforts amid the stern forces of 
Nature could not be more strikingly exhibited. 
The most rabid opponent of utilitarianism will own 
that a few scratches, more or less, of the plough, 
however important to man, are of very little con- 
sequence amid these immeasurable deserts. 

Nature takes ample care of her own rights. In 
the rigour of her climate and the ruggedness of her 
soil she imposes barriers upon the onward march 
of improvement which cannot be overleaped. It 
will not pay to cultivate the largest portion of our 
country. The most powerful artificial manures, 
and the most skilful " high farming," will not suf- 
fice to extract a remunerative produce from our 
more elevated hills and moorlands. Whatever the 
pressure of population may be, we must leave 
these solitudes to their primitive wildness, and give 
them over in fee-simple to the grouse and Alpine 
hare. They are the last strongholds into which 
beleaguered Nature, everywhere else subdued, has 
withdrawn behind her glacis and battlements of 
mountain ridges in grim defiance of the advancing 



90 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS, [chap. 

conqueror. Nor is it difficult to find reasons for 
putting up this trespass-notice and restricting man's 
occupancy of the earth. The lofty mountain ranges 
have been piled up, and the rugged desolation of 
the moorlands spread out, because the soul requires 
some great outlets of this kind to escape from the 
petty cares and conventionalities of civilized life, 
and to ascend by the great altar-steps of Nature 
towards the infinity of God. While to those who 
do not feel this craving for something higher and 
purer than they find in the every-day pursuits of 
life, and who, like good Bishop Burnet, consider 
hills and moors unsightly excrescences and de- 
formities upon the face of nature — evidences of the 
ruinous effects of the Fall — it may be sufficient to 
say, in justification of this reckless waste of land, 
that there is a physical as well as an aesthetic 
necessity for it. There is vicarious sacrifice in the 
arrangements of inanimate nature, as well as in the 
laws of human life. There is a beautiful balance 
by which barrenness is set over against fertility, 
and life against death. Some spots must be bleak 
and desolate in order that other spots may be 
clothed with verdure and beauty. These hills and 
moors are intended to be not only ornamental, but 
useful ; not only picture-galleries for the poet and 
painter, but also storehouses of fertility and wealth 
for the farmer and merchant. Their towering 
crests and spongy heaths arrest the vapours which 
float in the higher regions of the atmosphere, collect 
and filter them in reservoirs in their bosoms, and 



II.] USES OF THE MOORLANDS. 91 

send them down in copious streams to water the 
low grounds, and spread over the barren plains the 
rich alluvium which they bear away in solution 
from their sides ; while the fresh cool breezes, that 
play around the summits, sweep down with health- 
ful influences into the hot and stagnant air of the 
confined valleys. In many ways they perform a 
most important part in the economy of nature, 
and by their means is preserved the fertility of 
extensive regions which would otherwise have be- 
come hopelessly sterile. 

To those who are accustomed to the rich beauty 
of lowland scenery, the treeless desolate aspect of 
the moorlands may appear harsh and uninviting. 
They miss there the objects which they are accus- 
tomed to see, and around which have gathered the 
associations of years. There is apparently nothing 
within the circle of vision to arrest the eye or 
interest the mind. All seems one dead dull mono- 
tony, an interminable dark level, an eye-wearying 
waste, marked only but not relieved by grey rocks 
and shallow bogs reflecting an ashen sky. This 
first unfavourable impression, however, is sure to 
be dispelled by a more intimate acquaintance. 
Apart from the charm of contrast which most 
persons find in circumstances differing widely from 
those in which their life is usually spent, and the 
interest which contemplative minds find in all 
bare solitary places, there are countless objects of 
attraction and beauties of hue and form which fill 
up the seeming void, and make these apparently 



92 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

blank pages of nature most suggestive even to the 
dullest intellect. The seasons, marching with their 
slow solemn steps over the moorlands, may leave 
behind them none of those striking changes which 
mark their progress in the haunts of man. The 
elements of the scenery are too simple to be very 
susceptible to the vicissitudes of the year. But, 
still, there are some tokens of their presence ; and 
these are all the more interesting that they do not 
reveal themselves at once to a cold casual gaze, 
but require reverently to be sought out. Nowhere 
is the grass so vividly green in early spring-time 
as along the banks of the moorland stream, or on 
the shady hill-side, on which the cloud reposes its 
snowy cheek all day long and weeps away its soul 
in silent tears. How gorgeous is that miracle of 
blossoming when Summer with her blazing torch 
has kindled the dull brown heather, and every twig 
and spray burst into blushing beauty, and spread 
wave after wave of rosy bloom over the moors, 
until the very heavens themselves catch the re- 
flection, and bend enamoured over it with double 
loveliness ! How rich, under the mild blue skies 
of Autumn, are the russet hues of the withered 
ferns and mosses that cluster on the braes or creep 
over the marshes, imparting a mimic sunshine to 
the scene in the dullest day ! How exquisitely 
pure is the untrodden snow in the hollows which 
the winds heap into gracefully swelling wreaths 
and mark with endless curves of beauty ! Wander 
over one of the Perthshire moors from break of 



II.] ATMOSPHERIC EFFECTS. 93 

morn to close of day, and you will no longer stig- 
matize it as a monotonous uninteresting waste. 
From sunrise to sunset the appearance of the land- 
scape is never precisely the same for two successive 
hours. Like a human face, changing its expres- 
sion with every thought and feeling, it alters its 
mood as cloud or sunshine passes over it. Now it 
is bathed in light, under which every cliff and 
heather-bush shine out with the utmost distinct- 
ness ; anon it lies cold and desolate, unutterably 
forlorn and forsaken when the sky is overcast. 
At one time it is invested with a transparent 
atmosphere in w r hich the commonest and meanest 
objects are idealized as in a picture ; at another, 
great masses of sharply-defined shadows from the 
stooping clouds lie like pine-forests on the bright 
hill-sides ; or a flood of molten gold, welling over 
the brim of a thunder-cloud, streams down and 
irradiates with concentrated glory a single spot, 
which gleams out from the surrounding gloom 
like a lovely isle in a stormy ocean. And the sun- 
rises and sunsets — those grand rehearsals of the 
conflagration of the last day — who can describe 
them in an amphitheatre so magnificent, a region 
so peculiarly their own ! How inexpressibly sweet 
is the lingering tremulousness of the gloaming, 
that quiet ethereal Sabbath-like pause of nature in 
which the smallest and most distant sounds are 
heard, not loud and harsh, but with a fairy dis- 
tinctness exquisitely harmonized with the holiness 
of the hour ! There are no such twilights in 



94 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

England ; they belong only to northern latitudes, 
where the light, if it be colder and feebler, com- 
pensates by its longer stay, and its heavenly purity 
and beauty at the close. And how full of weird, 
•wild mystery is the scene as the evening grows 
darker ; how vast and vague and awful in the 
uncertain light are the forms of the hills ; how 
ghostly are the shadows ! There Night is a 
visible form, and her solitude is like the presence 
of a god. 

Nor is the moorland altogether dependent for its 
beauty upon atmospheric effects. It hides within 
its jealous embrace many a lovely spot on which 
one comes unexpectedly with all the interest of 
discovery. There are little dells where a streamlet 
has lured up from the valley, by the magic of its 
charms, a cluster of rowan-trees, whose red berries 
dance like fire in the broken foam of the water- 
falls, or a group of tiny, white-armed birches that 
always seem to be combing their fragrant tresses 
in the clear mirror of its linns. There are moorland 
tarns, sullen and motionless as lakes of the dead, 
lying deep in sunless rifts, where the very ravens 
build no nests, and where no trace of life or 
vegetation is seen — associated with many a wild 
tradition, accidents of straying feet, the suicide 
of love, guilt, despair. And there are lochs beau- 
tiful in themselves, and gathering around them a 
world of beauty ; their shores fringed with the 
tasselled larch, their shallows tesselated with the 
broad green leaves and alabaster chalices of the 



II.] HARMONIES OF THE MOORLAND. 95 

water-lily ; and their placid depths mirroring the 
crimson gleam of the heather-hills and the golden 
clouds overhead. 

I have often been struck, when wandering over 
the moors, with the wonderful harmonies of the 
various objects. The birds and beasts that inhabit 
the scene are clothed with fur or plumage of a 
brown russet hue, to harmonize them with the 
colour of the heathy wastes, and thus to facilitate 
their escape from their enemies. Nor is this har- 
mony confined to the form and hue of the living 
creatures — it is also strikingly displayed in their 
peculiar cries. All the voices of the moorland are 
indescribably plaintive — suggestive of melancholy 
musings and memories. No one can hear them, 
even on the sunniest day, without a nameless thrill 
of sadness ; and, when multiplied by the echoes 
through the mist or the storm, they seem like 
cries of distress or wailings of woe from another 
world. In them the very spirit of the solitude 
seems to find expression. None of our familiar 
songbirds ever wander to the moorland. It is 
tenanted by a different tribe, and the line of de- 
marcation between them is sharply defined. In 
the valley and the plain the thrush and the chaf- 
finch fill the air with their music ; but, as you 
climb the mountain-barrier of the horizon, you are 
greeted on the frontier by the wild cries of the 
plovers, which hover around you in ceaseless gyra- 
tions, following your steps far beyond their marshy 
domains. These are the outposts — the sentinels 



96 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

of the wild — and jealously do they perform their 
office. No stranger appears in sight, or sets a foot 
within their territories, without eliciting the warn- 
ing cry. Well might the Covenanters curse them, 
for many a grey head, laid low in blood by the 
persecuting dragoons, would have escaped, securely 
hidden among the green rushes and peat-bogs, 
but for their importunate revelation of the secret. 
Beyond the haunts of this bird stretches a wide 
illimitable circle of silence, in which only a shrill 
solitary cry now and then is heard, rippling the 
stillness like a stone cast into the bosom of a 
stream, and leaving it, when the wave of sound has 
subsided, deeper than before. And how absolute 
is that silence ! It seems to breathe — to become 
tangible. The solitude is like that of mid-ocean — 
not a human being in sight, not a trace or a re- 
collection of man visible in all the horizon ; from 
break of day to eventide no sound in the air but 
the sigh of the breeze round the lonely heights, 
the muffled murmur of some stream flashing 
through the heather, or the long, lazy lapse of a 
ripple on the beach of some nameless tarn. 

Here, if anywhere, you can be lulled on the lap 
of a placid antiquity. These grey northern moors 
are immeasurably old. The gneissic rock that 
underlies them is one of the oldest in the records 
of geology — the lowest floor of the most ancient 
sea, in whose water its particles were first pre- 
cipitated, to be afterwards indurated by chemical 
action, or mechanical pressure, into their present 



II.] ANTIQUITY OF THE MOORS. 97 

compact mass. Here was, probably, the first dry 
land that appeared above the surface of the ocean. 
Long before the Alps upreared their snowy peaks 
from the deep, and while an unbroken sea tossed 
its billows over the spots where the Andes and 
Himalayas now tower to heaven, these moors lay 
stretched out beneath the disconsolate skies, as 
islands reposing on a shoreless ocean ; not clothed, 
as at present, with brown heather and spongy 
moss, but presenting an aspect of still drearier 
desolation. They were all that in the earliest 
geologic epochs represented the beauty and power 
of Great Britain — the first instalment of that 
mighty empire which Britannia gained from the 
deep. Here, where Nature is all in all and man 
is nothing, you expect to find permanence. Time 
seems to have sailed over these moors with folded 
wing, leaving no more trace of his flight than the 
passage of the shadow over the dial-stone. And 
yet, calm and stedfast as the scene may appear, 
it has passed through many a stormy cataclysm, it 
has witnessed many a startling transition. On rock 
and mound the careful observer will find those 
strange hieroglyphics in which Nature's own hand 
has chronicled the eventful history of her 'youth. 
Here, where the sheep are quietly nibbling the 
green sward, the sea once broke in foam on the 
shore ; there, on that elevated knoll — if the surface 
were fully exposed — veins of granite thrust up by 
some violent internal convulsion might be seen 
reticulating the gneiss as with a gigantic network, 

H 



98 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

showing the mighty levers employed by Nature in 
piling up her Cyclopean masonry. Yonder the 
rocks are smoothed and polished, or else marked 
with grooves and scratches, telling of glaciers that 
passed over them, and suggesting to the imagina- 
tion the picture of that strange era' in the past 
history of our country, when from Snowdon and 
the Yorkshire moors to Ronaldsay and Cape 
Wrath eternal winter reigned with sternest rigour, 
and the Arctic bear hunted the narwhal amid the 
icebergs and icefloes that drifted past the coasts of 
Sussex and Hampshire. Yonder granite boulders 
that strew the hill-side, differing in mineral cha- 
racter from the prevailing formation of the region, 
and which, according to the Ossian mythology, 
fell from the leaky creel of a giant Finn striding 
over the heights one day to take vengeance with 
this rude but effective ammunition against an 
offending neighbour, the geologist tells us were 
transported to this place from a granitic district 
twenty miles distant on the back of a slow-moving 
glacier. And the elevated conical mounds, or 
moraines, which you meet with here and there, 
are accumulations of mud and gravel, marking in 
enduring characters the terminations of those 
vanished ice-streams. Turning from the distant 
silent ages of the geologist to the early lisping ages 
of our own race, we find numerous traces of these 
also chronicled on the moors. The labour of the 
peasant often discloses, deeply embedded in the 
moss, large trunks of birch, alder, and fir, masses 



II.] PRIMITIVE INHABITANTS. 99 

of foliage, cones and nuts in a perfect state of 
preservation, the fossils of the peat-bog. These, like 
the kindred relics of the coal-fields, tell us a tale 
of luxuriant forests clothing, like dark thunder- 
clouds, desolate tracts where not a single tree is 
now to be seen, and scarcely a juniper-bush can 
grow. Through the underwood of these primaeval 
forests the wild boar roamed, and the shaggy 
bison bellowed, and the long dismal howl of the 
wolf made the silence of midnight hideous, ages 
before the fanfare of the Roman trumpets startled 
the echoes of the hills. Nor are the traces of 
man's own presence in those remote times absent 
from the scene. The sides of some of the hills, 
which time out of mind have been abandoned 
irretrievably to the dusky heather, bear evident 
marks of tillage ; but the comparative fertility of 
these stony spots only proves the wretched state 
of the agriculture of the Aborigines. Here and 
there you stumble upon a grey moss-grown obelisk, 
a cairn or a cromlech — dim and undated relics, 
lying, like the fragments of an old world, on the 
twilight shores of the sea of time. Beside or 
under these we find the hatchet of stone, the arrow- 
head of flint, or the quern, on which no history 
or tradition sheds light. Who owned these rude 
implements? We cannot tell. Every recollection 
of the people who used them is swept away. Under 
the cromlech or the cairn they lay down and took 
their long last sleep, without a thought of posterity, 
or a care as to the conclusions future ages might 

H % 



100 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

arrive at regarding the scanty memorials they left 
behind. 

The vegetation of the moorlands is exceedingly 
varied and interesting. Its character is interme- 
diate between the Arctic and Germanic type, 
reminding one, in the prevalence of evergreen, 
thick, glossy-leaved plants, of the flora of Italy, 
which seems, from the evidence of ancient records, 
to have undergone a remarkable change in modern 
times, and now approximates in its general physi- 
ognomy to the flora of dry mountain regions. The 
plant which above all others is characteristic of 
the moor is, of course, the common heather or 
ling. It is one of the most social of all plants, 
covering immense tracts with a uniform dusky 
robe, and claiming, like an absolute autocrat, ex- 
clusive possession of the soil. And yet, though 
capable of growing in the bleakest spots, and en- 
during the utmost extremes of temperature, its 
distribution in altitude and latitude is singularly 
limited. It ascends only to a certain height on 
the mountains on which it grows : for, although it 
covers the summits of most of the hills in Eng- 
land, many of the loftiest Highland hills rise high 
above it, green with grass, or grey with moss and 
lichens. Its upper line runs from two to three 
thousand feet in the counties of Perth, Aberdeen, 
and Inverness, varying according as it grows on 
an elevated mountain range or on isolated peaks. 
On the w T est coast of Scotland it is very often 
found on a level with the sea-shore, almost min- 



II.] COMMON HE A THER. 1 1 

gling with the dulse and the bladder-wrack. In 
Norway, strange to say, although the general sur- 
face of the country is composed of high and barren 
plateaux, it is so scarce and local that one may 
travel hundreds of miles without finding a single 
specimen. It is replaced in such localities by the 
bearberry and crowberry, which form immense 
continuous patches, and look at a distance, espe- 
cially when withered, in spring or autumn, some- 
what like heather. Although abundant on the 
European side of the Ural mountains, it disappears 
very suddenly and decidedly on the eastern de- 
clivity of the range ; and it is entirely absent from 
the whole of Northern Asia to the shores of the 
Pacific. Its northern limits seem to be in Iceland, 
and its southern in the Azores. In Europe it 
covers large tracts of ground in France, Germany, 
and Denmark, particularly in the landes of Bor- 
deaux and the moors of Bretagne, Anjou, and 
Maine ; while in Great Britain it exists in almost 
every county. The range of the heath tribe is 
eminently Atlantic, or Western. It is found along 
a line drawn from the north of Norway along the 
west coast of Europe and Africa, down to the 
Cape of Good Hope, in the vicinity of which 
the family culminates in point of luxuriance 
of growth, beauty of flowers and foliage, and 
variety of species, some even attaining the arbo- 
rescent form. Along this line, which is com- 
paratively narrow, seldom running far from the 
coast, about four hundred distinct kinds, excluding 



102 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

varieties, are scattered, of which England and 
Scotland possess only four, and Ireland no less 
than six. 

On the barren moors of Cornwall a very inter- 
esting kind of heather, called the Cornish heath 
{Erica vagans), grows abundantly, distinguished 
by its crowded bell-shaped flowers. On the north 
coast of the same county another species occurs, 
called Erica ciliaris, with very large and gaily- 
coloured flowers, and leaves elegantly fringed with 
hairs. It is frequent near Truro and Penrhyn, and 
in one or two places in Dorset. These two Cornish 
heaths are also found in Ireland ; the one on a 
little island off the coast of Waterford, and the 
other near Clifton in Galway. In the Emerald 
Isle, Mackay's heather, which has large glabrous 
foliage, and a somewhat pale under-surface, grows 
in one or two spots in Connemara. It was dis- 
covered the same year on the Sierra del Peral, 
in Spain. In mountain-bogs in the west of Mayo 
and Galway the Mediterranean heather is sparingly 
distributed, sometimes attaining a height of five 
feet, with numerous upright rigid branches, and 
flowers in leafy racemes. The Scottish Menziesia 
(M. Coeruled), the most abundant kind of heath in 
Norway, is, as I have already said, almost extinct 
on Dalnaspidal moor in Perthshire, its only locality 
in this country. It is found near Luchon, in the 
central Pyrenees, as a waif of the glacial epoch ; 
and the Austrian botanist Host reports it as occur- 
ing at Moggio in Friuli. Every visitor in Ireland 



II.] ERICAS. 103 

must be familiar with St. Dabeoc's heath {Dabcecia 
polifolia\ which the guides and peasants frequently 
sell to tourists at exorbitant rates, as a memorial 
plant. This lovely heather occurs in great pro- 
fusion on the low granitic hills to the westward 
of Galway, all the way from the lower end of 
Lough Corrib. It grows on the heathy moors 
by the roadsides, and though it is found a con- 
siderable way up the mountains, it is there much 
less abundant, smaller in size, and rarely flowers. 
The common Bell heather of our Highland moor- 
lands {Erica cinerect) produces the finest effect of 
all our native heaths, growing as it does in great 
masses in bare places, especially where the burning 
of the common ling has enriched the soil with its 
ashes, and removed a formidable competitor in 
the struggle of existence. It frequently purples 
a whole hill-side ; and nothing finer, as regards 
effect of colour, can be seen even in the tropics. 
Mr. Wallace, in his recent work on "The Malay 
Archipelago," says : " The result of my examina- 
tions has convinced me that the bright colours 
of flowers have a much greater influence on the 
general aspect of nature in temperate than in 
tropical climates. During twelve years spent amid 
the grandest tropical vegetation, I have seen 
nothing comparable to the effect produced on 
our landscapes by gorse, broom, heather, wild 
hyacinths, hawthorn, purple orchises, and butter- 
cups." The cross-leaved heath {Erica tetralix) is 
much less abundant, growing in boggy places 



104 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

among the yellow spikes of the asphodel and 
the snowy plumes of the cotton-grass. It is more 
like a hot-house heath, with its rich clustered head 
of pale rosy blossoms. But growing sparingly, 
and its colour being more delicate, its effect in the 
mass, and at a distance, is not equal to its indi- 
vidual beauty close at hand. These two heaths 
are badges of Highland clans. 

'That Australia and America have no true heaths 
is a botanical aphorism. In Australia the tribe is 
replaced by the Epacridce, which are often as 
beautiful as any of the Cape heaths. In North 
America the Scottish Menziesia is more abundant 
than it is in Scotland, or even in Norway. That 
continent possesses many plants that are closely 
allied to the heath tribe. Hudsonia ericoides, which 
covers the white sandy wastes in many parts of 
New Jersey, is so like the common heath that it 
is not unfrequently mistaken for it when out of 
flower. And in the immense forests which clothe 
every hill and dale of the Laurel, Greenboy, and 
Alleghany ranges, rhododendrons, kalmias, azaleas, 
andromedas, and other plants of the heath alliance, 
form the chief underwood, and are remarkable for 
their size and age. It is recorded of the first 
Highland emigrants to Canada, that they wept 
because the heather, a few plants of which they 
had brought with them from their native moors, 
would not grow in their newly -adopted soil. It 
is understood, however, that an English surveyor, 
nearly thirty years ago, found the common ling 



II.] CRQ WBERR Y AND BEARBERR Y. 105 

in the interior of Newfoundland ; while in one 
spot in Massachusetts it occurs very sparingly- 
over about half an acre of boggy ground, in the 
strange company of andromedas, kalmias, and 
azaleas peculiar to the country. It was first ob- 
served ten years ago, by a Scottish farmer re- 
siding in the vicinity, who was no less surprised 
by its unexpected appearance than delighted to 
set his foot once more on his native heath. None 
of the plants seemed to be older than six years, 
and may, therefore, have been introduced by some 
one who found relief from home sickness in form- 
ing this simple floral link between the new and 
the old country. 

There are many beautiful little shrubs growing 
on the moorland along with the heather which are 
found nowhere else. The crowberry, called by the 
natives Fiantaga or Dearcac jithich, spreads over 
rocky places in large tufted masses, producing 
early in summer a liberal supply of black juicy 
berries, which form the principal food of the grouse 
and other moorland birds. The dry barren knolls, 
where the wind blows keenest and the scent of 
water is never felt, are profusely covered with the 
trailing stems and glossy leaves of the bearberry, 
Arctostaphylos Uva-Ursi, well-known to every 
Highlander by its Gaelic name of Braoileagan- 
nan-con. The flower is even more beautiful than 
that of either the cross or fine-leaved heather — 
a little waxen bell, with the faintest blush on its 
snowy cheeks ; and the fruit is no less lovely, 



106 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

clusters of mealy beads of the richest crimson 
gleaming out in beautiful contrast from the dark 
green leaves. It is also valuable as a medicinal 
plant : an infusion of its leaves being well-known 
to have a stimulating or tonic effect upon the 
mucous membrane. A species callecj the black 
bearberry is found on dry barren grounds on many 
of the Highland mountains. The flowers are of 
a pale rose colour, and the berries of a rich lus- 
trous black. On Ben Nevis, near the lake, on Hoy 
Hill, Orkney, and especially on the mountains of 
Sutherland and Caithness, this rare species occurs, 
and forms an attractive feature in the Alpine land- 
scape towards the end of autumn, when its leaves 
assume a brilliant flame colour. The famous 
strawberry-tree, or Arbutus ', so conspicuous in the 
beautiful scenery of Killarney, and supposed by 
some to have been introduced from Spain by the 
monks of Mucross Abbey, is an arborescent form, 
an aristocratic relative of this lowly Highland 
family. On the moist hill-sides the mountain rasp 
or cloudberry, the badge of the clan Macfarlane, 
grows in great abundance ; and its rich orange 
fruit, under the name of eiracan or noops, furnishes 
a grateful refreshment to the shepherd on a hot 
autumn day. One of the most beautiful plants 
of the moorland is the Marsh Andromeda. It is 
found but sparingly in a few places in the North 
of England and in the Lowlands of Scotland, and 
in Queen's County and Kerry, Ireland ; but where 
it is found, it is a prize worth going far to get. It 



II.] THE BILBERRY. 107 

is a small evergreen shrub, with oval ruby-coloured 
flowers concealed among the terminal leaves. In 
Norway it is very abundant on the moors in com- 
pany with the Menziesia. I gathered it in great 
profusion by the roadsides when passing through 
Romsdal, between Nystuen and Ormen ; its rose- 
coloured flowers fringing the ditches and peeping 
out from among the boulders. The beauty of its 
flowers when contrasted with the dreariness of its 
habitats, supposed to be haunted by supernatural 
beings, led to its receiving the classical name of the 
beautiful virgin who was chained to the rock and 
exposed to the attack of the sea-monster. 

Another beautiful plant common on the High- 
land moorlands is the Pyrola or winter-green, 
which loves to grow in upland pine-woods, or 
under the lee of some dense heather bush, per- 
fuming the air, when it occurs in any quantity, 
with its delicate scent, strongly suggestive of the 
lily of the valley. In similar situations the bil- 
berry also luxuriates. Abundant everywhere on 
the exposed sides of the hills, it flowers and fruits 
only in the shelter of the woods or on the shady 
banks of subalpine streams. Its berries are ex- 
ceedingly agreeable to the taste, and are largely 
used in the form of preserves in the Highlands. 
Blaeberry hunting in July is a favourite pastime 
among the children ; and for days afterwards the 
persistent stains of the spoil crimson cheeks, lips, 
and dress. The bog whortleberry is more spar- 
ingly distributed, though it is frequent enough on 



108 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

most of the Highland mountains, ascending almost 
to their summits. The corolla is of a pale rosy 
colour, and the berry black and juicy, but inferior 
in flavour to the bilberry. The cowberry ( Vacci- 
nium Vitis I deed), known as the Lus-nan-braoleag \ 
ornaments some parts of the Highland mountains, 
woods, and heaths with its straggling shrubby 
growth and box-like leaves. It seldom flowers or 
fruits in this country ; but in Norway it bursts into 
blossom everywhere, and is loaded with pale flesh- 
coloured flowers, lighting up the dark pine-woods 
with its beauty. Next to the bilberry, the cran- 
berry, whose Gaelic name is Mnileag, is the most 
interesting and useful of the Vacciniums. It loves 
moist situations, and therefore occurs in peat-bogs, 
with its root immersed in the great spongy cushions 
of the bog-moss, and its evergreen wiry leaves 
trailing over them. The flowers are of a lovely 
rose colour, with a deeply divided corolla and 
segments bent back in a very singular manner. 
In this country it is very local and scarce ; but 
in Norway it grows in great profusion on almost 
every hill ; and nothing can equal the luxurious- 
ness of its growth and fruiting in the marshes and 
steppes in the north of Russia, from which the vast 
quantities used by our confectioners for tarts are 
annually imported. Growing abundantly among 
the heather is the beautiful heath-pea, Orobus 
tuberpstiS) with its bright blue and pink blossom 
lighting up with a tinge of colour the brown moor- 
land. The long knotted black roots of this plant 



II.] JUNIPER AND SWEET GALE. 109 

used to be employed by the Highlanders, under 
the name of Comin^ when on a journey or a foray, 
in the absence of food and water, as they have the 
singular property when chewed of repelling hunger 
and thirst for a long time. An agreeable fermented 
liquor was also made with them, tasting somewhat 
like liquorice ; and in a season of scarcity they 
have been used instead of bread. The juniper 
forms miniature pine-groves in sheltered places, 
and yields its berries liberally to give a piquant 
gin flavour to the old wife's surreptitious bottle of 
whisky ; while the sweet gale or Dutch myrtle, 
called by the Highlanders void, perfumes with its 
strong resinous fragrance the foot that brushes 
through its beds in the marshes, and gives a simi- 
lar spice of the hills to the Sunday clothes of the 
Highland belle, as they are carefully folded with 
a sprig between each in the "muckle kist." Beneath 
the shelter of these tiny fruit-trees of the heath 
there is a dense underwood of minute existences, 
curious antique forms of vegetable life, performing 
silently, and all unknown and unnoticed, their 
allotted tasks in the great household of Nature. 
The little cup-lichen reddens by thousands every 
dry hillock ; the rein-deer moss whitens the 
marshes with its coral-like tufts ; the long wreaths 
of the club-moss creep in and out among the 
heather roots, like lithe green serpents, sewed to 
the ground by delicate threads, yet sending up 
here and there from their hiding-places white 
two-pronged spikes to catch the sunbeams ; hard 



110 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

tufts of another species of club-moss, Lycopodimn 
selago, the Garbhag-nan-sleibh, of the Highlanders, 
by whom it was often used as a mordant in fixing 
the colours of their tartans, occurs at frequent 
intervals ; the sphagnum-moss lines the bogs with 
its great pads of brilliant crimson ox green ; and 
the white fork-moss covers the wet tussocks with 
its pale cushions, into which the foot sinks up to 
the ankle ; and thus you wander on, observing and 
gathering each new and strange production, until 
you are lost in admiration of the wealth of beauty 
and interest scattered in the waste without any 
human eye to behold it. 

Nor is the moorland altogether destitute of 
human interest. Far up in some lonely corrie 
may be seen the ruins of rude sheilings surrounded 
by soft patches of verdure, on which the heather 
has not intruded for centuries. To these High- 
land chalets the wives and daughters of the crofters 
used to come up from the valley every summer 
with their cattle and dairy utensils, and spend 
three or four months in making cheese and butter 
for the market, or for home consumption during 
the winter, as is the custom still in some secluded 
districts of Norway and the Swiss Alps. The 
Gaelic songs are full of beautiful allusions to the 
incidents of this primitive pastoral life ; and many 
fresh and interesting materials for poetry or fiction 
might be gleaned from this source by those who 
have exhausted every other field. Farther down 
the hill, though still among the moorlands, there 



II.] HIGHLAND SHEILINGS. Ill 

are other ruins of cottages and farmsteads, the 
effects of those extensive ' clearings ' which took 
place forty or fifty years ago in the great Highland 
properties. Scores of such c larichken,' as they are 
called, with the rank nettle growing round the 
hearthstone, and surrounded by traces of cultiva- 
tion, may be seen in places where sheep and deer 
now feed, undisturbed by the presence of man. 
The wisdom and justice of depopulating these 
upland valleys have been often questioned. It 
was, at the least, a terrible remedy for a terrible 
disease ; and we ought, perhaps, as a nation, to be 
thankful that upon the whole it has been pro- 
ductive of unlooked-for beneficial results. The 
situation of these ruins is often exceedingly pic- 
turesque ; perched under the lee of a grey crag, 
with a little streamlet murmuring past through 
the greensward, like the voice of memory inform- 
ing the solitude, and a single fir-tree bending its 
gnarled branches over the roofless walls, its scaly 
trunk gleaming red against the sunset, enhancing, 
instead of relieving, the desolation of the scene. 
I have spent many happy days in these simple 
homes, the abodes of honest worth and rough but 
genuine hospitality, on which I look back through 
the haze of years with a pleasing regret. Well do 
I remember your humble hut, Donald Macrae, 
afar amid the wild moors of Bohespick, with its 
thatched roof and unmortared walls, green and 
golden with Nature's lavish adorning of moss and 
lichen. Your little patch of garden was overgrown 



112 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

with weeds which congregated there from all 
quarters, as if glad of a shelter from the inhos- 
pitable wild, and so rudely fenced in from the 
heather that the rabbits found easy admission to 
your peas, and the red deer often came down 
hunger -driven from the snow- clad heights, and 
devoured in a few seconds your scanty stock of 
winter kail. But in no garden of lord or com- 
moner were the red hairy gooseberries so sweet, 
and Mount Hybla itself could not boast of more 
luscious honey than the liquid amber gathered 
from the heather-bells by the three beehives in the 
sunny corner. I can testify to the noisy welcome 
of your collies when I used to appear in sight, and 
to the shyness of your four chubby pledges of 
affection, as they cautiously peered out at me 
from behind the safe shelter of the maternal wing, 
mute and irresponsive to the kindest familiarities, 
and to the most tempting offers of "sweeties." 
The vision of your hospitable board rises up 
before my mental eye, loaded with a pile of crisp 
oat-cakes ; a jug of foaming cream, with that rich 
nutty flavour peculiar to the produce of cows fed 
on old pastures uncontaminated by villanous arti- 
ficial manures ; cameos of golden butter, with the 
national symbol in beautiful relief; a great hard 
cheese of ewe's-milk ; and last, not least, a bottle 
of native mountain-dew undesecrated by water or 
gauger's grace. I see dimly, through the peat-reek 
of your ingle, your own manly face and buirdly 
figure clad in tartan coat and kilt spun by your 



II.] A SHEPHERD'S SHEILING. 113 

aged mother from the fleece of your own sheep, 
with a collie at your feet, and your youngest 
hope dandling on your knee, and your comely 
wife, with mealy cheeks and arms bare to the 
shoulders, baking the household cakes, as perfect 
a picture of a Dutch Venus as ever emanated 
from the pencil of Rubens or Houdekoetter ! 
May the blessing of Him that dwelt in the bush 
rest upon you and yours in that distant Aus- 
tralian valley, which, true to the instinct of home, 
you have pathetically named after your native 
spot ! 

It is well that there are still many homes of this 
kind, inhabited by an equally hospitable race, to be 
found by the stranger when weary and belated in 
his wanderings amid the Highland moorlands. I 
know nothing more enjoyable than a week's sojourn 
in one of these places. The infatuation which drives 
so many people every season to dissipate their 
time amid the frivolities of some pert fashionable 
village or watering-place, on pretence of going 
to the country, is utterly incomprehensible to me. 
I would advise every sensible person who wishes 
a fresh supply of good temper as well as of good 
health, to avoid carefully, as he would the plague, 
every one of those spas and villages " within easy 
reach by coach or railway," and boldly take up 
his abode in some lonely farmhouse or shepherd's 
sheiling on the Highland moors. Here, with an 
utter change of scene, you breathe an air pure 
and fresh from Nature's own goblet. Ozone, that 

I 



114 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

purifying principle in the atmosphere which is 
antagonistic to all fevers and miasma, increases 
with the height ; and here it abounds, filling all the 
atmosphere with its healthful influences. There 
is a tonic in every draught of it for every species 
of dyspepsia, for every form of enervation and 
lassitude that results from a pamp'ered stomach 
or an overwrought brain. There is balm in every 
breeze, expanding the spirit and lifting it buoyantly 
up from under the burden of care and anxiety, 
until it embraces like a rainbow all nature within 
its radiant arch, and old cares and sorrows become 
dim as dreams. You feel as if, besides all the 
gases needful for respiration, there were present 
some ethereal nectarine element baffling the an- 
alysis of the chemist, yet revealing its presence 
in the thrill of conscious exuberant life which it 
excites in your frame. Here, not far from the 
centres of civilization, within reach, and yet remote, 
you may realize the benighted state of our an- 
cestors ; feel what it is to exist without letters, 
newspapers, visitors, calls of ceremony, or any of 
the thousand and one appliances of modern life, 
and yet at any time be able to survey from some 
elevated point a region within whose magic ring 
all these things are enjoyed. Here is the highest 
soul of monastic retirement — all its romance, with 
none of its restraint. You stand apart from the 
world in an eddy of life, a quiet sheltered bay cut 
off from the ocean, whose rough stormy waves 
rave and foam without, with no society save that 



II.] A HIGHLAND HOME. 115 

of the taciturn farmer and his family, the black- 
faced sheep and the dumb mountains. You will 
have to put up with some inconveniences, no doubt. 
You may feel, when forcing your body into the 
wall-press which stands for your bed in the ben- 
room, as if you were rehearsing, like Charles V — 
with the disadvantage of being alive, and no 
mourners — the ceremony of your own coffining. 
The friction of the native sheets and blankets 
against your delicate skin may remind you forcibly 
of the shampooing which nearly flayed you in 
a Turkish bath. You will, perhaps, have to wash 
yourself in the neighbouring burn, in absence of 
all toilette apparatus. Your diet will be largely 
a milk one, reducing you to the condition of a 
Cretian ; and your teeth, lately under the care of 
Messrs. Molar and Co., may have hard work with 
the granitic cakes and fibrous mutton. But all 
these disadvantages will enhance, by way of con- 
trast, your enjoyment of the place. They will be 
incidents to think of pleasantly afterwards amid 
the luxuries of your club, or during that pleasant 
half-hour of retrospection before you fall asleep 
amid the downy billows of civilization's four-poster. 
And, depend upon it, there will be a great deal of 
insensible education going on in your converse 
with your own soul in the solitude of the hills, 
and a stock of softening influences accumulating, 
which will make the toilsome dreary days of 
winter brighter, and prepare you the better for 
that " bourne from whence no traveller returns." 

I 2 



116 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

One of the most frequent incidents of the moor- 
land, about the beginning of June, is peat-making, 
the most picturesque of Highland outdoor occu- 
pations. In those basin-shaped hollows which give 
the scenery an undulating aspect there are large 
deposits of peat, formed by the decay of number- 
less generations of those plants which delight in 
cool climates and moist soils. The history of this 
accumulation of carbonaceous matter is exceed- 
ingly interesting to the geologist. It furnishes a 
plausible solution of the difficulties involved in 
the question of the formation of coal ; it provides 
data by which recent geological changes may be 
determined with some degree of accuracy ; and 
frequently, owing to its antiseptic qualities, it 
becomes an archaeological cabinet, preserving the 
relics of former generations. In none of these 
aspects, however, are the peat-bogs of the High- 
land moors so interesting as in their connexion 
with the habits and customs of the peasantry. It 
is no easy task to thread one's way among the 
bogs and marshes where the peat is found, the 
danger being somewhat imminent of falling plump 
over the yielding edge into some open pool of inky 
water, or sinking up to the waist in some treach- 
erous spot veiled over with a deceitful covering of 
the greenest moss. In the outskirts of this wilder- 
ness of bogs the peat-makers are hard at work. 
One man, with a peculiarly shaped spade, cuts the 
peats from the wall of turf before him and throws 
them up to the edge of the bog, where a woman 



II.] PEA T-MAKING. 117 

dexterously receives and places them on a wheel- 
barrow, another woman rolling away the load and 
spreading it out carefully on some elevated hillock, 
exposed to the sunshine, in order to dry and 
harden. And thus the process goes on from 
sunrise to sunset, with an hour's rest for each 
meal. Though looked forward to, especially by 
the younger labourers, with much pleasure, as 
a delightful contrast to the monotony of their 
ordinary work about the farm, and as affording 
peculiar facilities for carrying on the mysteries 
of rustic courtship, peat-making is most fatiguing 
work ; and when, as is often the case, they have 
to walk a. distance of five or six miles to and 
from the spot, and to carry on their labours 
under the scorching glare of the sun, exposed 
without shelter to torrents of rain or piercing 
winds, it must be confessed that they pay dearly 
for the materials which in the long cheerless 
winter of the North afford them both fire and 
light. In remote inaccessible districts, where 
wood is scarce and coal almost unknown on 
account of its enormous price, peat is the sole 
fuel used by the inhabitants. The whole of a 
peat-bog, covering in many places an area of 
several acres, and occupying what was once evi- 
dently the bed of a lake, is parcelled out into 
several portions, which are generally annexed by 
the proprietor to the holdings of the tenants on 
his estate who are nearest to the spot. These 
parcels of peat-bog are usually given free of rent ; 



113 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

and the whole expense connected with peats is 
thus only the labour involved in their manufacture 
and carriage. So rough are the roads, however, 
and so long the distances to which they have in 
most cases to be carried, that peat is not so cheap 
and economical a fuel as might be supposed. The 
selling price is usually three shillings a cart, and 
six carts are understood to last as long as a ton of 
coal. Peat-making is not nearly so common in 
the Highlands as it used to be. The facilities of 
carriage to almost every part of the country by 
sea and land are now numerous, and coal in con- 
sequence is so reduced in price, as to be more 
within reach of the poorer classes ; while the use 
of that fuel saves time and labour which can be 
more profitably employed. 

Another spectacle peculiar to the moors is the 
burning of the heather. This practice is not con- 
fined to any particular locality, but is followed 
all over the Highlands. It commences in spring, 
when the snows have completely disappeared, and 
the weather is dry and fine, and is carried on at 
irregular intervals throughout the whole summer. 
Its object is, by clearing the ground of the heather, 
under whose shade no other vegetation can grow, 
to produce pasturage for the sheep. In spots that 
have been thus cleared the grass grows luxuriantly, 
and forms a thick close carpet of green verdure, of 
which the mountain sheep are particularly fond. 
The stumps of the heather are usually left in the 
ground, for the fire consumes only the foliage and 



II.] BURNING THE HEATHER. 119 

the smaller twigs ; and these skeletons, closely 
matted together, bleached and sharpened by the 
elements, frequently crossing one's path, are very 
disagreeable to walk on, unless the feet are 
protected by very thick boots. The contrasts of 
shape and colour formed by these clearings in the 
aboriginal heather are very curious, and strikingly 
diversify the monotony of the landscape — here a 
uniform brown sea of heather ; there long stripes 
of grey colouring running in and out and crossing 
in all directions, like promontories and capes ; and 
yonder bright green isles of verdure smiling amid 
the surrounding desolation. The shepherds, unless 
under the immediate surveillance of a gamekeeper, 
are often reckless in setting fire to a hill-side, not 
caring how far the flames may extend, allowing 
them to burn for days and even w r eeks, until a 
friendly deluge of rain extinguishes them. Valu- 
able tracts of grouse moor are thus often ruined 
beyond repair, and the destructive effects not 
unfrequently extend to upland woods and corn- 
fields, presenting, on almost an equal scale, a picture 
of the famous prairie fires of America. Hares and 
deer are seen careering before the flames ; grouse 
are whirring past blinded and scorched, and lizards 
and snakes are running hither and thither in an 
agony of terror ; volumes of dense smoke darken 
the air, and the dull red embers light up the dark- 
ness of the night and reflect a volcanic glare upon 
the surrounding hills. It is one of the grandest 
sights of the kind to be seen in the Highlands. 



120 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

These rough hasty sketches among the heather 
would be manifestly incomplete without a notice, 
however brief, of grouse-shooting. Being no sports- 
man, I despair of giving an adequate conception 
of the sport to the uninitiated. It is only those 
who have taken part in it who can understand the 
importance which it has attained in the world of 
fashion, and the enthusiasm with which the most 
phlegmatic English millionaires and members of 
Parliament enter into it. We have all, from the 
highest to the lowest, a strong spice of the savage 
in our nature ; and a longing at times comes over 
us to break loose from the restraints of civilization 
and revel in the wild freedom of our barbarian 
ancestors. The grouse-shooting fever may be one 
of the periodical ebullitions of the original tem- 
perament. But, after all, there is really very much 
to enjoy connected with the sport. The very 
change from the Babel of noises in the metropolis 
to the deep hush of Nature's great solitudes has a 
soothing charm, while the return to simple hardy 
life is a gratification which is felt all the more 
keenly the more that ordinary life is artificial and 
refined. Then the associations of the sport — -the 
fresh exhilarating air of the hills, laden with the 
all-pervading perfume of the heather bells ; the 
magnificent prospect of hill and valley stretching 
around ; the blue serenity of the autumnal sky ; 
the carpet of flowering heather glowing for miles on 
every side, and so elastic to the tread ; the vast- 
ness and profundity of the solitude ; as well as the 



II.] GROUSE-SHOOTING. 121 

strange and unfamiliar sights and sounds of the 
scene — all these appeal to that poetical spiritual 
faculty which is latent even in the most prosaic 
statistician of St. Stephen's. Add to these the 
exciting nature of the sport itself — the feelings of 
emulation it excites among rival sportsmen ; the 
vigilance and wildness of the birds, requiring the 
utmost caution and skill in approaching them ; 
the thrill of expectation as the well-trained dogs 
suddenly stop and point with uplifted paw and 
anxious look to the spot where a covey is nestled ; 
the sudden startling whirr of the birds ascending 
at your approach ; the satisfaction of bringing 
down, with w r ell-aimed double fire, the plumpest 
of them ; the rustic luncheon beside the spring ; 
and the return, amid the splendour of the setting 
sun, with well-filled bag, to be greeted half-way 
from the snug shooting-lodge, with the warm 
praises of rosy lips and the fond looks of loving 
eyes. Nay, even the disappointments to be met 
with — the long w r earisome walks over bog and 
heather, searching in vain for game ; the false 
pointing of dogs, deceived by the scent left behind 
in places where game were a while before, but 
are not now ; and the most vexatious thing of all, 
the defying insolence in the kok-kok-kok of the 
male bird as he flies off unhurt from your fire at 
the head of his family — all these are so many 
elements of the romantic, w T hich throw a halo of 
the deepest interest around the sport, and make 
the 1 2th of August to be more eagerly anticipated 



122 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

by the weary Londoner than any other day in the 
calendar. 

Grouse-shooting has been of incalculable benefit 
to the Highlands. Thousands of pounds are thus 
annually spent in the poorest districts ; communi- 
cation is opened up with the most isolated spots ; 
employment is furnished to carriers and gillies, 
who might otherwise have either to starve or 
emigrate ; and proprietors receive something like 
a second rent from parts of their estates which 
were formerly valueless. The preservation of the 
game is thus of the utmost importance, not un- 
worthy of being considered a national question. 
Even apart from such selfish considerations, it 
would be a great pity if this interesting bird 
should become extinct in the only quarter of the 
globe where it is found. As it is, every one will 
be sorry to learn that it is becoming scarcer and 
wilder every year, disappearing rapidly from loca- 
lities where it used to be abundant. The only 
ground of complaint any one can have against the 
sport is, that it has a tendency to foster that spirit 
of exclusiveness which characterises many of the 
great landed proprietors, and induces them to shut 
up some of the wildest scenery in Scotland from 
the foot of tourist and savant. The depopulation 
of many Highland districts through this game 
mania might be overlooked, owing to the many 
ulterior advantages that have resulted therefrom, 
both to those who remain and to those who have 
emigrated. But there is neither advantage nor 



II.] TRESPASSING ON THE MOORS. 123 

courtesy in such a strict and extensive application 
of the law of trespass. The reason commonly 
alleged for it is a mere pretence. Not one of the 
true lovers of nature — and it is only such who 
would care to penetrate out of the beaten tracks 
into these spots — but would be as careful of the 
rights and possessions of the proprietor as though 
they were his own ; and it is difficult to see 
how the presence at long and rare intervals of a 
solitary pedestrian in such immeasurable solitudes 
can have the effect of scaring game. The very 
worst thing he could do would be merely to send 
them scudding away from one heather hillock to 
another ; and in all likelihood the human biped 
would be the more scared of the two by this 
movement. It requires pretty stout nerves, and 
somewhat unusual presence of mind, to hear with 
unruffled composure the sudden and unexpected 
whirr of a heathcock ; while the vision of a herd 
of wild deer with lowered antlers, in autumn, is 
sufficient to make the boldest turn tail. Let pro- 
prietors enjoy their game rights to the full, but 
it is unworthy of the liberality of the age to debar 
the "unlanded" from the enjoyment of universal 
nature, which to many is as much a necessity as 
their daily bread, and more than counterbalances 
the want of property. Full liberty, without any 
hampering restraint whatever, to wander among 
the heather, and gather the materials of their study 
where Nature scatters them with so lavish a hand, 
should be accorded to the artist and the man of 



124 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. 

science, whose pursuits do not interfere with the 
gains or enjoyments of others, and to whom we 
are indebted for some of the most refined and 
elevated pleasures of life. 



CHAPTER III. 

A GARDEN WALL IN A HIGHLAND GLEN. 

ALPHONSE Karr, in his charming little work 
entitled " A Tour round my Garden," shows how 
much pleasure and instruction may be found by 
careful eyes and thoughtful minds within the very 
narrow limits of an ordinary garden, to compensate 
the sedentary for being deprived of the enjoyments 
of travel. I have often thought that, if the garden 
wall, which he has strangely overlooked, were 
properly described, with all the objects and asso- 
ciations connected with it, the Frenchman's tour 
would have been made still more interesting. 
Though one of the most familiar and common- 
place objects upon which the eye can rest, it has 
often suggested to myself many a pleasing and 
profitable train of thought in dull moods of mind, 
when least disposed for inquiry or reflection. To 
those who cannot climb the mountain summit, or 
wander over the moorland, a few words describing 
the points of attraction which it possesses may not 
be out of place at a time when the worker becomes 
the observer, and serious pursuits are laid aside for 
a while to enjoy the dolce far niente of the country. 



126 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Still small voices that were drowned by the bustle 
of life have now a chance of being heard amid the 
universal silence ; and humble sights of nature — 
overlooked amid engrossing scenes of human 
interest — are now appreciated with all the zest of 
a holiday. 

There is a structure before my eye at this 
moment which is my beau ideal of a garden wall. 
It stands on the brink of a little stream that clothes 
every mossy stone in its bed with sparkling folds 
of liquid drapery, and makes its refreshing murmur 
heard all day long in the garden, animating it as if 
with the voice of a friend. The space of grassy 
sward outside between it and the water — green as 
an emerald — is jewelled with constellations of 
primroses, anemones, and globe-flowers, as fair in 
their own order and season as the cultivated 
flowers which make the borders within gay as the 
robe of an Indian prince. Three fairy birch-trees 
bend over it with their white stems glistening like 
marble columns in the sunlight, and their small 
scented leaves whispering some sinless secret to 
the breeze, or, when the wind is hushed, stealing 
coy glances at the wavering reflection of their 
beauty in the stream. It is built of rough stones 
loosely laid above each other without mortar or 
cement, and coped on the top with pieces of 
verdant turf taken from the neighbouring common ; 
and would perhaps be considered very unsightly 
in the suburbs of a city when contrasted with the 
trim elegant walls surrounding villa gardens. In 



III.] A GARDEN WALL, , 127 

this situation, however, it is exceedingly appro- 
priate, and harmonizes with the character of the 
scenery much better than if its stones were 
chiselled with nicest care, and laid together with 
all the skill of the architect. The eye of a painter 
would delight in its picturesqueness, and the 
accessories by which it is surrounded ; for while 
offering an insuperable obstacle outside to little 
eager hands, covetous of forbidden fruit, ripe, and 
especially unripe, it is yet sufficiently low inside 
to permit an unobstructed view of the scenery in 
front, allowing the eye to wander dreamily over 
the landscape as it billows away in light and shade 
— from the green cornfields up to the pine-woods 
that hang like thunder-clouds on the lower heights 
— and thence to the brown heather moorlands, and 
on to the blue hills that melt away in sympathy 
and peace on the distant horizon. That soft dis- 
tant blue of the hills, painted across the western 
sky with a hand tender as love's, completes the 
picture ; for it is the religion of the landscape, and 
unites the human with the divine — lifts the thoughts 
to the Heavenly hills from whence cometh our aid. 
It is the apocalypse of the garden, the revelation 
of the truth that the spiritual is the only real 
and substantial — that the eternal things of the 
universe are those which afar off seem dim and 
faint. 

The garden which the wall surrounds — " the de- 
corated border-land between man's home and 
Nature's measureless domains" — is very pleasant. 



128 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Bright with simple old-fashioned flowers, and 
nestlfng amid verdure of blossoming tree and ever- 
green shrub, it looks like a little Eden of peace, 
sacred to meditation and love, which the noises 
of the great world reach only in soft and subdued 
echoes. Alas ! the beautifully embroidered robe 
of nature too frequently reveals the' suggestive 
outlines of some dead joy, though at the same 
time it mercifully softens over and conceals its 
ghastly details. There is a sepulchre in this gar- 
den too ; and, though the wall has been high 
enough to bound the desires and fancies of simple 
contented hearts that never sought to mingle in 
gayer scenes, it has not been sufficiently high to 
exclude that dark mist of sorrow in which the 
light of life goes out, and the warmth of the heart 
gets chill. That wall is dear to me on account of 
its strangely sweet memories of mingled joy and 
sadness — wall-flower scents from the ruins of 
former hopes and dreams. Eyes have gazed upon 
it as a part of their daily vision, that are now 
closed to all earthly beauty ; voices beside it have 
sounded merrily at the sweetest surprise of the 
year, when the snowdrop first peered above the 
sod like the ghost of the perished flowers, or when 
the yellow yolk of the crocus suddenly lit up the 
brown soil like a passing smile within her dream 
that stirred the sleeping spring — voices that sud- 
denly dropped off into silence when our life-song 
was loudest and sweetest ; tender and true hearts 
under the caresses of its overshadowing birch-trees 



HI.] HUMAN ASSOCIATIONS. 129 

have known "of earthly bliss the all — the joy of 
loving and being loved." Little fingers have often 
been busy among the flower-beds which it shel- 
tered, leaving touching traces of their work in 
buds beheaded left lying artlessly beside the parent 
cluster — joys plucked too soon, and fugitive as 
they were pleasing. Fresh marks of little teeth 
have often been found deep sunk in a dozen rosy 
apples growing temptingly within reach on the 
lowest bough — a trace of "original sin," natural 
to every juvenile descendant of Eve, and easy to 
forgive when, as in these instances, linked with so 
much innocence : it seemed so childlike to take 
a bite out of several ripening apples instead of 
plucking and finishing one. But, apart from such 
human associations, I have studied the wall often 
for its own sake ; and to me it has all the interest 
of a volume. Covered over with its bright frescoes 
of parti-coloured lichens and mosses, and crowned 
with its green turf, sprinkled with grass-blossoms 
and gay autumn flowers, it reminds me of the rich 
binding of an old book on which the artist has 
bestowed especial care ; or rather, it stands in re- 
lation to the garden like the quaintly illuminated 
initial of a monkish chronicle, telling in its gay 
pictures and elaborate tracery the various incidents 
of the chapter. 

A rough stone wall in any situation is an object 
of interest to a thoughtful mind. The different 
shapes of the stones, their varied mineral character, 
the diversity of tints, flexures, and lines which 

K 



130 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

occur in them, are all suggestive of inquiry and 
reflection. Sermons may thus be found in stones 
more profitable, perhaps, than many printed or 
spoken ones, which he who runs may read. The 
smallest appearances link themselves with the 
grandest phenomena ; a minute speck supplies a 
text around which may cluster many a striking 
thought : and by means of a hint derived from 
a* mere hue or line in a little stone — almost inap- 
preciable to the general eye — may be reconstructed 
seas and continents that passed away thousands of 
ages ago — visions of landscape scenery to which 
the present aspect of the globe presents no parallel. 
This flexure of the stone tells me of violent vol- 
canic eruptions, by which the soft newly deposited 
stratum — the muddy precipitate of ocean waters — 
heaved and undulated like corn in the breeze ; 
that lamination, of which the dark lines regularly 
alternate with the grey, speaks eloquently of gentle 
waves rippling musically over sandy shores ; and 
the irregular protuberances, which I see here and 
there over the stone, are the casts of hollows or 
cracks produced in ancient tide-beaches by shrink- 
age — similar appearances being often seen under 
our feet, as we walk over the pavement of almost 
any of our towns. Yonder smooth and striated 
surface of granite is the Runic writing of the 
northern Frost-king, transporting me back in fancy 
to that wonderful age of ice when glaciers slid over 
mountain rocks, and flowed through lowland val- 
leys where corn now grows and the snow seldom 



IIL ] GEOLOGICAL HISTORY. 131 

falls. And if there be a block of sandstone, it may 
chance to exhibit not only ripple-marks of ancient 
seas, but also footprints of unknown birds and 
strange tortoises that sought their food along the 
water's edge ; and sometimes memorials of former 
things more accidental and shadowy than even 
these — such as fossil raindrops, little circular and 
oval hollows, with their casts — supposed to be 
impressions produced by rain and hail, and indi- 
cating by their varying appearances the character 
of the shower, and the direction of the wind that 
prevailed when it was falling. All these signs and 
remains of contemporaneous history, are the coins 
and medals which the Great Architect has de- 
posited for the information of after ages of intel- 
ligent beings, as He laid each course of stone in 
the foundations of the world. Every one has 
heard of the crazy Greek who went about exhibit- 
ing a brick as a specimen of the building which he 
wished to sell ; but in the structure of each geolo- 
gical system every stone is significant of the whole. 
Each fragment, however minute, is a record of 
the terrestrial changes that occurred when it was 
! formed ; ingrained in every hue and line is the 
! story of the physical conditions under which it 
was produced. The Ten Commandments were not 
more clearly engraved on the two tables of stone 
than the laws of nature that operated in its forma- 
tion are impressed upon the smallest pebble by the 
i wayside. Its materials furnish an unmistakeable 
clue to its origin, and its shape unfolds its subse- 

K 2 



132 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap, 

quent history. God has impressed the marks of 
the revolutions of the earth not merely upon large 
tracts of country and enormous strata of rock and 
mountain range — difficult of access and inconve- 
nient for study — but even upon the smallest stone, 
so that the annals of creation are 'multiplied by 
myriads of copies, and can never be lost. Man 
cannot urge the excuse that he has no means of 
knowing the doings of the Lord in the past silent 
ages of the earth, that His path in the deep and 
His footsteps in the great waters are hopelessly 
unknown. Go where he may, look where he 
pleases, he will see the medals of creation — the 
signet marks of the Almighty — stamped indelibly 
and unmistakeably upon the smallest fragments 
of the dumb dead earth ; so that if he should 
ungratefully hold his peace, and withhold the due 
tribute of praise to the Creator, "the very stones 
would immediately cry out." 

Anatomists of scenery, who look beneath the 
surface to the skeleton of the earth, tell us that 
the features of mountains and valleys are de- 
pendent upon the geological character of their 
materials ; and, therefore, those who are skilful in 
the art can tell from the outlines of the landscape 
the nature of the underlying rocks, although no 
part of them crop above ground. A passing glance 
at the wayside walls will reveal the prominent 
geology of any district, just as the shape of a 
single leaf and the arrangement of veins on its 
surface suggest the appearance of the whole tree 



HI.] FOSSIL REMAINS. 133 

from which it has fallen, or as a fragment of 
a tooth or a bone can call up the picture of the 
whole animal of whom it formed a part. In Aber- 
deenshire the walls are built principally of granite, 
grey and red ; in Perthshire, of gneiss and schist ; 
in Mid-Lothian and Lanarkshire, of sandstone ; 
and in the southern Scottish counties generally, 
of trap and porphyry. Sometimes they are com- 
posed of transported materials, not native to the 
district ; and the history of these opens up a field 
of delightful speculation. But there are no walls 
so interesting as those which occur in the moun- 
tain districts of Derbyshire, and in some parts of 
Lancashire. .In almost every stone are embedded 
fossil shells, and those beautiful jointed corals 
called ericrinites, which look like petrified lilies, 
and have only a few living representatives in the 
ocean at the present day. Even the most homo- 
geneous blocks are found on close inspection to be 
composed entirely of mineralized skeletons, and to 
form the graves of whole hecatombs of shells and 
corallines long ago extinct. Strange to think that 
our limestone rocks are formed of the calcareous 
matter secreted by living creatures from the waters 
of the sea, and their own shelly coverings when 
dead, just as our coal-beds are the carbonized 
remains of former green, luxuriant forests. Thus, 
while walking along the highway in almost any 
locality, the most hasty examination of the wall 
on either side furnishes the student of nature with 
abundant subjects for reflection ; and those lofty 



134 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

dykes, built by the farmer to keep in his cattle, 
or by the jealous proprietor to secure the privacy 
of his domain, while they forbid all views of the 
surrounding country, amply compensate for the 
restriction they impose by the truths engraven on 
their seemingly blank but really eloquent pages — 
like the tree which in winter permits us to see the 
glory of the sunset and the purple mountains of 
the west through its lattice-work of boughs, but 
in summer confines our vision by the satisfying 
beauty of its own full foliage and blossoms. 

The mist of familiarity obscures, if not altogether 
hides, the intrinsic wonder that there is about many 
of our commonest things. The existence 'of stones 
is an accepted fact, suggestive of no thought or 
feeling — unless, indeed, we stumble against one ; 
we look upon them as things of course, as natural 
in their way as the rocks, streams, and woods 
around — as a necessary and inevitable part of the 
order of creation ; and yet they are in reality well 
calculated to excite curiosity. Sterling, in his 
" Thoughts and Images," beautifully says : " Life of 
any kind is a confounding mystery ; nay, that 
which we commonly do not call life — -the prin- 
ciple of existence in a stone or a drop of water — 
is an inscrutable wonder. That in the infinity of 
time and space anything should be, should have 
a distinct existence, should be more than nothing ! 
The thought of an immense abysmal nothing is 
awful, only less so than that of All and God ; and 
thus a grain of sand, being a fact, a reality, rises 



III.] FORMATION OF STONES. 135 

before us into something prodigious and immeasur- 
able — a fact that opposes and counterbalances the 
immensity of non-existence." But this wonder and 
mystery stones share in common with all material 
things ; their own origin is a special source of 
interest. Many individuals, if they think at all 
about the subject, dismiss it with the easy reflection 
that stones were created at first precisely in the 
form in which they are now found. It may, how- 
ever, be laid down as a geological axiom, that no 
stones were originally created. The irregular aggre- 
gations of hardened matter so called formed part at 
first of regular strata and beds of rock, and were 
broken loose from these by volcanic eruptions, by 
the effects of storms or floods, by frost and ice, or 
by the slow corroding tooth of time. By these 
natural agencies the hard superficial crust of the 
earth has been broken up into fragments of various 
sizes, carried away by streams, glaciers, and land- 
slips — modified in their shapes by friction against 
one another, and at last, after many changes and 
revolutions, deposited in the places where they are 
found. We owe the largest proportion of the stones 
scattered over the surface of the earth to glacial 
action — one of the most recent and remarkable 
revolutions in the annals of geology. Man is thus 
provided with materials for building purposes con- 
veniently to his hand, without the necessity of 
blasting the rock, or digging into the earth ; and it 
is a striking thought, that the very same great laws 
by which the disposition of land and sea has been 



136 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

effected, and the great features of the earth modi- 
fied, have conduced in their ultimate results to the 
homeliest human uses. The materials which the 
poorest cotter builds into the rudest crowfoot dyke 
around his kail-yard or potato-field, have been pro- 
duced by causes that affected whole continents and 
oceans. The meanest and mightiest things are 
thus intimately associated and correlated ; just as 
the forces that control the movements of the stars 
are locked up in the smallest pebble— keeping its 
particles together, a miniature world. 

Stones are sometimes out of place, as when they 
occur in a field or garden ; but they form a feature 
in the aesthetic aspect of scenery which could not 
well be wanted. What a picturesque appearance 
do the huge rough boulders strewn over its surface 
impart to the green hill-side ; especially if, as is 
often the case, their sides are painted and cushioned 
with that strange cryptogamic vegetation which one 
sees nowhere else, and a daring row T an-tree plants 
itself in their crevices and waves its green and 
crimson flag of victory over soil and circumstances ! 
There are few things more beautiful than the pebbly 
beach of the mountain lake ; and some of the finest 
subjects for a picture may be found by the artist 
along the rough rocky course of a mountain stream, 
where the stones form numerous snowy waterfalls, 
and the spray nourishes hosts of luxuriant mosses 
and wild flowers. Although dumb, and destitute 
of sonorous properties, how large a share of the 
sweet minstrelsy of nature is contributed by them. 



III.] JESTHETIC RELATIONS. 137 

They are the strings in the harp of the stream, 
from which the snowy fingers of the water-nymph 
draw out ever-varying melody — a ceaseless melody, 
heard when all other sounds are still. By their 
opposition to the current they create life and music 
amid stillness and monotony, change the river from 
a dull flat canal into a thing of wild grandeur and 
animation, and redeem the barren waste from utter 
silence and death. Commonest of all common 
things, it is strange to think that there are parts of 
this rocky material earth of ours where stones are 
as rare as diamonds, and the smallest pebble is a 
geological curiosity. The natives of some of the 
coral islands of the Pacific procure stones for their 
tools — this being the only purpose for which they 
use them — solely from the roots of trees that have 
been carried away, with their load of earth and 
stones adhering to them, by the waves from the 
nearest mainland, and grounded upon their shores. 
So highly are these stray waifs of the ocean valued 
that a tax is laid upon them, which adds consider- 
ably to the revenue of the chiefs. This reminds us 
of the preciousness of stones during what is called 
the stone age of our own country — whose date is so 
apocryphal — when flint and granite were the sole 
materials employed for making the various imple- 
ments of war and of household use, and these rude 
implements were buried with the dead in the stone 
cist under the huge cromlech or grey cairn. Those 
relics dug up in the times of our forefathers, before 
the attention of antiquaries or geologists was 



138 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

directed to the subject, were accounted as holy 
stones, supposed to have formed part of the caba- 
listic appendages of the necromancer of bygone 
ages ; and were in some instances enveloped in 
leather or encased in gold, and worn as amulets 
round the neck. 

Many of the stones of the garden wall before me 
are covered over with a thin coating of vegetation 
of various hues and forms. The tints from Nature's 
palette have been applied with wonderful skill ; the 
warmer and more vivid hues gradually blending 
with the grey and neutral ones. By this means, 
the harsh, artificial aspect of the wall has dis- 
appeared, and an air of natural beauty has been 
imparted to it, exquisitely harmonizing with the 
white trunks of the birch-trees, the green flower- 
sprinkled bank of the streamlet, and the blue 
cloud-flecked softness of the over-arching sky. In- 
stead of disfiguring, it now adorns the landscape, 
and the eye rests upon its mottled, softly-rounded 
sides and top with unwearied pleasure. It affords 
an illustration of the common truth, that there are 
no distinct lines of demarcation, no harsh, abrupt 
objects allowed in nature. Even man's work must 
come under this law ; and wherever Nature has 
the power, she brings back the human structure to 
her own bosom, and, while dismantling and disin- 
tegrating it, clothes it with a living garniture of 
beauty, such as no art of man can imitate. The 
farmer may keep the meadow or cornfield distinct 
from the surrounding scene, heavy with uniform 



III.] HARMONY OF COLOURS. 139 

greenness, or ugly with the discordant glare of 
yellow w r eeds ; but as soon as Nature obtains the 
control of it, when out of cultivation, she brings it 
into harmony with the landscape by carefully 
spreading her wild flowers over it in such a way 
as to restore the proper balance of colour. As the 
earth is rounded into one great whole, so all its 
objects are connected with each other, not merely 
by laws of structure and dependence, but also by 
close aesthetic relations. The rock, decked with 
moss, lichen, and fern, shades in sympathy of hue 
and outline with the verdure of wood and meadow 
around it ; the mountain and the ocean melt on 
their farthest limits into the blue of the sky ; the 
river and the lake do not preserve the distinctness 
of a separate element, but blend with the solid land, 
by mirroring its scenery on their tranquil bosom ; 
and the very atmosphere itself, by its purple clouds 
on the horizon, raising the eye gradually and insen- 
sibly from the dull tangible earth to the transparent 
heavens, becomes a part of the landscape instead 
of the mere empty space that surrounds it. 

While this picturesque effect of the wall is 
admired, the objects which produce it are very 
generally overlooked. If carefully examined, how- 
ever, they will be found very interesting, both on 
account of their peculiarities of structure and the 
associations connected with them. Almost every 
stone is made venerable, as also the adjoining fruit- 
trees and espaliers, with the grey rosettes of that 
commonest of all lichens, the stone Parmelia. This 



140 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

plant used to be extensively employed by the 
Highlanders under the name of Crotal in dyeing 
woollen stuffs of a dirty purple, or rather reddish- 
brown, colour. By the Arabian physicians it was 
administered under the name of dchnen^ for purify- 
ing the blood ; and it was also an ingredient in the 
celebrated unguentum armarium^ or sympathetic 
ointment, which was supposed to cure wounds if 
the 'weapon that inflicted them were smeared with 
it, without any application to the wounds them- 
selves. Besides this lichen, the ointment consisted 
of human fat, human blood, linseed oil, turpentine, 
and Armenian bole, mixed together in various 
proportions. A present of the prescription for this 
precious mess was made by Paracelsus, about the 
year 1530, to the Emperor Maximilian, by whom 
it was greatly valued. Much was written, in the 
medical treatises of the time, both for and against 
the efficacy of such applications ; and, in an age 
when that strange principle of nomenclature known 
as the " Doctrine of Signatures " prevailed, and 
prescriptions as a rule were founded upon some 
real or fancied resemblance between the remedy 
and the disease, the stone Parmelia was an object 
of great importance. It is now sold by the London 
herbalists solely for the use of bird-stuffers, who 
line the inside of their cases and decorate the 
branches of the miniature trees upon which the 
birds perch with it. There are also numerous 
specimens on the wall of the yellow Parmelia, no 
less renowned than its congener in the annals of 



III.] YELLOW WALL PARHELIA. 141 

medicine as an astringent and febrifuge. By 
Dr. Sander, in 1815, it was successfully adminis- 
tered as a substitute for Peruvian bark in inter- 
mittent fevers ; the great Haller recommended its 
use as a tonic in diarrhoea and dysentery ; and 
Willemet gave it with success in cases of haemor- 
rhages and autumnal contagious fluxes. In the 
arts it is employed at the present day as a dye- 
stuff, yielding a beautiful golden yellow crystalliz- 
able colouring matter, called chrysophanic acid, 
which is nearly identical with the yellow colouring 
matter of rhubarb ; and, like litmus, it may be 
used as a test for alkalies, as they invariably com- 
municate "to its yellow colouring matter a beautiful 
red tint. It is the most ornamental of all our 
lichens. Its bright, golden thallus, spreading in 
circles two or three inches in diameter, and covered 
with numerous small orange shields, decks with 
lavish profusion the rough unmortared walls of the 
poor man's cottage ; and many a rich patch of it 
may be seen covering the crumbling stones of some 
hoary castle or long-ruined abbey as with a sunset 
glory. Growing in a concentric form, when it 
attains a certain size the central parts begin to 
decay and disappear, leaving only a narrow circular 
rim of living vegetable matter. In this manner 
it covers a whole wall or tree with spreading ripples 
of growth and decay — analogous to the fairy rings 
formed by the growth and decay of mushrooms in 
a grassy field. This yellow wafer of vegetation 
is attached to the stone by slender white hairs on 



142 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the under surface, looking like roots, although they 
do not possess the power of selecting and appro- 
priating the materials of growth peculiar to such 
organs. We know not by what means lichens 
derive nourishment. Some species certainly do 
disintegrate the stones on which they Occur, and 
absorb the chemical and mineral substances which 
they contain, as is clearly proved when they are 
analysed. But a far more numerous class are found 
only on the hardest stones, so closely appressed 
and level with their surface that they seem to form 
an integral part of them. In this way they con- 
tinue for years, ay centuries and ages, unchanged 
— their matrix as well as their own intense vitality 
resisting all decay. There are instances of en- 
caustic lichens covering the glaciated surfaces of 
quartz on the summits of our highest hills, which 
may probably be reckoned among the oldest of 
living organisms. Such species can obviously 
derive no benefit save mere mechanical support 
from their growing-place, and must procure their 
nourishment entirely from the atmosphere, and 
their colouring matter from solar reflection. 

We have in the form and substance of these 
lichens evidences of their low vitality. They are 
invariably flat and circular ; and this spherical form 
indicates a state of rest, or of suspended or com- 
pleted energy. We find this shape in plants only 
in those parts that have accomplished their pur- 
pose and returned to repose, — such as in fruits, 
seeds, buds, leaves, — each leaf being a thing limited 



III.] ROUND SHAPE OF LICHENS. 143 



and unalterably fixed at a determinate stage of 
metamorphosis — and in the mature shape of the 
tree, clothed with its full foliage. The active parts 
of plants have axial and linear forms, such as the 
stem, the root, the branch, the leaf-stalk ; and these 
forms are expressions of the greatest amount of 
change and activity of substance. The simple force 
of growth pushes forward in one direction, and 
changes the point into a line which is a flowing 
point. When the round cell begins to grow it 
elongates into a tube ; when the round seed ger- 
minates it pushes forth a straight plumule and 
radicle ; when the lichen becomes more organized 
and active in higher species, it changes from the 
orbicular thallus to the shrubby linear tuft ; and 
when again the plant retires to a state of repose 
it reverts from the linear to the circular form from 
which it started. The plant grows from linear 
stem to round leaves, and from round leaves to 
linear stem, — until at last the organism reaches its 
final stage of rest in the round flower and fruit and 
seed. The circular form in the animal world is 
also expressive of repose and completion. We see 
it in the egg, in the coiling of the sleeping cat or 
dog, in the rotundity of aged and indolent persons 
compared with the slimness of youthful and active 
individuals, in the spherical, almost inanimate- 
looking jelly of the Medusa compared with the 
straight lines of the active body of the antelope. 
The serpent coiled in sleep or hybernation, and 
straightened into a living lance ready to dart 



144 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

upon its prey, represents in an expressive way the 
significance of the circular form as compared with 
the linear. We have in these facts then an ex- 
planation of the round shape of foliaceous lichens. 
We see in them a freer attainment of the spherical 
form than in other plants, because of their lower 
vitality, their greater amount of stability and re- 
pose, their slower growth and longer life. What is 
the ultimate form of other plants is with them the 
primary, from the very necessity of their nature. 
They are usually placed in such unfavourable 
circumstances that each portion of their struc- 
ture must have the closest relation to the central 
point and to all the other portions ; each part 
must be balanced into perfect symmetry ; and 
the whole plant must exhibit at every stage 
of growth the form of greatest security, which 
gives the maximum of contents with a mini- 
mum of exposure. Then, too, the evidence of the 
substance of the lichen corroborates that of its 
form. The two are co-ordinated for the attain- 
ment of the same end, viz. stability and repose. 
The grey colour of most lichens approximates to 
that of the corn of wheat when ripest, and is pro- 
duced by the same cause. The wheat as it ripens 
loses its nitrogenous substances, which are the 
media of its vital activity, and becomes rich in 
carbon, which plays a more passive part in the 
organism. The cells of the wheat seed are filled 
with starch, like the cells of the lichen ; and this 
starch is just the ashes deposited by the fire of 



III.] REVIVAL OF LICHENS. 145 

life, which gradually limit and keep it in a smoul- 
dering dormant state for any length of time, until 
the seed is sown and quickened, when the starch 
in germination is changed into more active che- 
mical products, and the grey round starchy seed 
elongates into the green chlorophyll-filled linear- 
shaped stem of the young wheat. Thus the life of 
the lichen becomes fettered like the wheat by the 
vegetative process itself; and the continuous secre- 
tion of highly carbonized products thickens the 
walls of its cells, and obstructs intercourse with the 
outside, as well as forms accumulations in the con- 
tents of the cells, which prevent internal movement. 
In this way . all vital activity comes at last to a 
pause. But when rain comes, and the lichen is 
moistened, a kind of germination takes place over 
its whole surface, the starch is converted into 
chlorophyll, the lichen exhibits a bright green 
colour, and proceeds to grow and exercise all the 
functions of life, until the process of suffocation and 
entombment again takes place, and the lichen 
subsides into the grey starchy immobility of its 
normal state. 

The eye of the naturalist, educated by practice 
to almost microscopic keenness, can discern scat- 
tered over the wall numerous other specimens of 
this singular vegetation, appearing like mere dis- 
colorations or w r eather-stains on the stones. Some 
are scaly fragments so minute as to require very 
close inspection to detect them. Others are inde- 
finite films of nebulae or greyish matter, sprinkled 

L 



146 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

with black dots about the size of a pin's head. 
Others are granular crusts of a circular form, with 
a zoned border ; and when two or three of them 
meet together, they do not coalesce and become 
absorbed into one huge overgrown individual. 
The frontier of each is strictly preserved by a 
narrow black border, however it may grow and 
extend itself, as zealously as that of France or 
Austria. The law against removing a neighbours 
landmark is as strictly enforced in lichen as in 
human economy. When a stone is covered with 
a series of these independent lichens, it looks like 
a miniature map of America ; the zoned patches 
resembling the states, the black dots the towns, 
and the lines and cracks in the crust the rivers. 
There is one species growing on pure quartz, an 
exquisite piece of natural mosaic of glossy black 
and primrose yellow, called the geographical lichen 
from this resemblance. 

These lichens on the garden wall are, so to 
speak, the domesticated species of the Crypto- 
gamia. They are to man, in their own order, what 
the sparrow and robin that frequent the garden 
are in theirs. They come out of the wilds of 
nature and share in the companionship of man ; 
are made humane by the occasional resting of his 
eye and the dwelling of his thought upon them. 
By giving his own life to them, as they thus enter 
into the sphere of his interests, he raises them into 
fit associates for his mind, and invests them with 
his moral associations. And as the domesticated 



III.] DOMESTICATED LICHENS, 147 

useful plants in the garden occupy the first place 
in this human classification of the vegetable king- 
dom, so, constituting the beginning of the series, 
they summon all the rest down to the lowest 
members about them, and group their whole realm 
around man. But the lichens venture farther than 
the wall. They intrude into the very centre of 
the garden, and invest the choicest fruit-trees with 
their scaly armour. They are to these useful apple 
and pear trees what the poppies are to the corn, 
cumberers of the ground, but giving us beauty 
instead of utility, and thought for the mind instead 
of food for the palate ; turning to us the religious 
instead of the material side of nature. Who would 
willingly miss that hoary and picturesque gar- 
niture which they give to the orchard, making the 
youngest trees look as venerable as if centuries 
had passed over them ! Nowhere do the lichens 
appear so beautiful or shapely as on the smooth 
bark of the apple and the pear trees. They put 
on their fairest robes in the presence of these 
princesses of the vegetable kingdom, and reflect 
the beauty which they receive. The yellow Par- 
melia has there a richer yellow, and the olive 
Parmelia a glossier tinge ; while two of the loveliest 
species of lichens are found almost exclusively 
upon these trees — the Borrera tenella and the 
Parmelia stellaris — with their symmetrical grey 
thallus and black apothecia. 

Several of the stones are sprinkled with a 
grey, green, or yellow powder, as dry and finely 

L 2 



148 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

pulverized as quicklime or sulphur. These grains 
are either the germs of lichens awaiting develop- 
ment, or they are individual vital cells, capable of 
growing into new plants, in the absence of proper 
fruit. The pulverulent lichens are always barren, 
because a strict individualization of each cell is at 
variance with the regular formation of organic 
fructification, which checks and circumscribes the 
individuality of the separate cells. It is difficult 
to distinguish these pulverulent masses from the 
powder of chalk, verdigris, or sulphur ; and yet 
they are endowed with the most persistent vitality, 
which almost no adverse circumstances can ex- 
tinguish. The principle of life resides in each of 
these grains as truly as in the most complicated 
organism ; and, though reduced here to the very 
simplest expression of which it is capable, it is 
not divested of its mystery, but on the contrary 
rendered more wonderful and incomprehensible. 
A wide and impassable barrier separates these 
life-particles from the grains of the stone on which 
they occur, and yet it is very difficult in some 
cases to distinguish the one from the other. The 
extreme simplicity of structure displayed by these 
protophytes is more puzzling to the botanist than 
any amount of complexity would have been. The 
rudimentary stages of all the flowerless plants 
appear in this singular form. The germs of a moss 
are similar to those of a lichen, and the germs of 
a lichen to those of a fern or sea-weed. These 
powdery grains represent the basis from which 



III.] DEVELOPMENT THEORY. 149 

each separate system of life starts, to recede so 
widely in the highest forms of each order. The 
advocates of the development theory have en- 
deavoured to derive from this circumstance a 
plausible argument in support of their views. They 
assert that the germs of all cryptogamic plants 
are not only apparently, but essentially, the same ; 
and that the differences of their after development 
are owing to accidental circumstances of soil, 
situation, and other physical conditions. If they 
happen to fall upon decaying substances, they 
become fungi ; if they are scattered in soil, they 
become ferns or mosses ; if water is the medium 
in which they are produced, they grow into algae ; 
and on dry stones and living trees they spread 
into the flat crusts of lichens. Plausible as this 
idea looks, it is not borne out by experiment, for 
the same germs sown in the same soil, exposed 
to precisely similar conditions, develop one into 
a moss, another into a lichen, a third into a fungus, 
and a fourth into a fern ; showing clearly that 
though we cannot discover the difference between 
their rudimentary germs, a real distinction does 
nevertheless exist — that the seeds of these minute 
insignificant plants are in reality as different from 
each other as the seed of an apple-tree is dif- 
ferent from that of a pine or palm. The develop- 
ments of nature are not regulated by accidents 
and caprices ; they are the results of fixed pre- 
determined laws, operating in every part of every 
living organism, from the commencement of its 



150 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

growth to the end of its life -history. And the 
similarity which we find between them is not the 
consequence of a lineal descent of one from 
another, but only a feature of the same grand plan 
of construction. The resemblance is not the result 
of anything in these forms themselves ; it is a 
purely intellectual relation of plan. With this 
small piece of granite before me, then, what solemn 
and far-reaching questions are connected ! Geo- 
logists of the Plutonian and Neptunian schools 
have keenly contested the mode of its formation ; 
while arguments drawn from the living particles 
of vegetation on its surface have been advanced 
in support of the " development " and " origin of 
species " theories. Could we explain the mysteries 
locked up in this little stone, we should be furnished 
with a key to the mysteries of the universe. 

In one of the shady corners of the wall, covering 
a soft stone of chlorite schist, is a large patch of 
leprous powder of the most brilliant yellow colour, 
usually occurring only on trees, and there only yield- 
ing its fructification. Superficially it resembles the 
other mealy lichens that spread over the garden 
wall ; but if closely examined on the bark of a 
fir-tree by a pocket lens, its surface is seen to be 
sprinkled with a perfect forest of little jet-black 
stems as thick as a horse-hair and about a line 
in height, crowned with minute round cup-like 
heads, also of a deep black colour. This tiny capi- 
tulum is of the same substance as the peduncle upon 
which it rests ; and in its earliest state is closed 



III.] CALICIUM. 151 

in its upper part with a very thin membrane like 
the volva or veil which covers a young mushroom. 
As the fruit ripens the membrane bursts and 
entirely disappears, leaving exposed the exces- 
sively minute granules which, mixed with slender 
fibres, had previously lain concealed in the cup. 
The slightest breath of wind or touch of insect s 
wing carries off the powdery seeds to be sown in 
some suitable situation. When no external agency 
operates, the little hair-like stalk which formerly 
held the tiny urn above its head, is endowed with 
a peculiar sensitiveness when the seed is ripe, and 
bending downwards turns over the goblet and 
empties its contents upon the air. In appearance 
the fructification seems closely allied to that of 
the fungi, especially to the genus Trichia ; but 
the powdery crust effectually separates it from 
them, and places it among the lichens. The 
capsules do not spring however from the granu- 
lations of the crust, but from the naked spots 
between them, and are scattered without order 
over the surface. This lichen is known as the 
Calicium hyperellum^ and is a plant of singular 
beauty; the whole genus being among the love- 
liest of nature's Lilliputian vegetation. One could 
gaze for hours unweariedly, lost in admiration of 
the richness of its colouring and the gracefulness 
of its tiny acorn-like cups, mounted on hairs, whose 
glossy sooty blackness contrasts in a most striking 
manner with the rich golden yellow crust. Not far 
from this species is another curious lichen, growing 



152 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

on a rough block of gneiss, called the Isidium 
corallinum^ from the resemblance which it bears 
to the corals, not only in its singularly calcareous 
texture, but also because its crust is composed of 
slender erect cylindrical stems or papillulae packed 
closely together, and increasing in height from the 
circumference to the centre, where they are about 
a line or two high. These papillulae support the 
round black fructification about the size of a pin's 
head, and in this respect agree with the peduncles 
of the Calicium. The thin tartareous crust w T hich 
lies at their base is only seen round the border 
of the lichen, and even there only in young speci- 
mens. The plant before me forms a wide patch 
of nearly circular outline, and about a foot in 
diameter. It is of a dead opaque white colour, 
tinged with grey, and is cracked all over into 
small tumid warts. From its enormous size it 
must be very much older than the garden wall * 
and must have been growing no one knows how 
many years or even generations, for the lichens 
are a very slow-growing and long-lived race, on the 
stone when it was transported from the moorland 
to its present site. It looks like a microscopic 
cousin of the SphceropJioron coralloides^ and the 
Stereocaiilon pascJiale^ among the handsomest of 
the British lichens, often found growing on the turfy 
top of dry stone dykes in subalpine regions. All 
these plants represent in the blue depths of the 
atmosphere, the corals in the green depths of the 
sea. The idea o£ the animal is repeated by the 



ill.] PO WDER Y LICHENS. 1 5 3, 

vegetable. The same thought of God has a dual 
expression, and is testified to by two witnesses in 
two different elements. The ocean of air has 
its corals as well as the ocean of water. This is 
merely one of the innumerable analogies between 
the cryptogamia of the vegetable and the crypto- 
gamia of the animal world, between the crusta- 
ceous lichens and the radiating polyps, which show 
to us the profound unity and harmony of all 
creation. 

When the powdery lichens occur in large quan- 
tities, they give a very picturesque effect to rocks, 
trees, and buildings. The trunks and branches of 
trees in the outskirts of large towns are covered 
with a green powder, fostered by the impurity of 
the air ; a similar substance is also produced in 
damp low-lying woods, where the trees are so 
densely crowded as to prevent proper ventilation 
and free admission of light. In Roslin Chapel, 
near Edinburgh, the curious effect of the rich 
carvings of the walls and pillars is greatly enhanced 
by a species of Lepraria, of a deep verdigris colour, 
covering them with the utmost profusion. It gives 
an appearance of hoary antiquity to the structure, 
and is the genuine hue of poetry and romance. 
On boarded buildings, old palings, and walls, may 
be sometimes seen a greyish film sprinkled with 
very red particles, turning yellow if rubbed, and 
exhaling when moistened a very perceptible odour 
of violets ; from which circumstance it has obtained 
the name of Lepraria Jolithus. Linnaeus met with 



154 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

it frequently in his tour through (Upland and East 
Gothland, covering the stones by the roadside with 
a blood-red pigment. It also spreads over the wet 
stones of St. Winifred's Well in North Wales, and is 
supposed to be the blood of the martyred saint — a 
superstition which, like the dark stain x>n the floor 
of Holyrood Palace, one has not the heart to dis- 
turb. I know not if others have realized the senti- 
ment, but I have often felt as if I could willingly 
have given up all the knowledge I possess of the 
structure and history of these obscure productions, 
in exchange for the power of being able to look 
upon them with the childish wonder which in early 
unscientific days they inspired. There is an air of 
mystery and obscurity about them peculiarly fas- 
cinating, which it is not desirable to dispel by the 
garish light of technical knowledge. Each one of 
them seemed a self-discovered treasure of child- 
hood, as much my own as if God had made it on 
purpose and presented it to me ; and it was ever 
a part of my joy to think that I had found some- 
thing which no one else knew or had seen before, 
and that I could bestow upon it pet names of 
my own. They were links connecting me with an 
unseen unexplored world, where the marvellous 
was quite natural — parts of the scenery amid which 
elves and fairies, and all the denizens of the heaven 
that lies about us in our infancy, lived. Fauns 
might at any moment peer out at me from behind 
the old moss-grown trees on which they grew ; or 
white-limbed shapes might glide away from the 



III.] MYSTICAL BEAUTIES. 155 

embowered fountain to whose rocky sides they 
gave their wealth of beauty and plenitude of life. 
So many strange things, the existence of which we 
never suspected, then presented themselves to our 
notice every day, that nothing seemed impossible 
or supernatural. Precise limits have now fixed 
for us the extent of our domain, and we know 
everything within it. "First a slight line, then 
a fence, then a wall; then the wall will rise, will 
shut in the man, will form a prison, and to get out 
of it he must have wings. But around the child 
neither walls nor fences — a boundless extent, all 
irridescent with brilliant colours." The glow of 
miracle vanishes out of the cold clear grey of 
history ; but faith and wonder and the primeval 
glory of the earth are born afresh into the world 
with every child. Only at the sunrise and sunset 
of life do the heavens come down to the earth ; in 
the noon of manhood they mount ur3 to the zenith 
and seem far away overhead. How full to the 
brim with beauty were the flower-cups that were 
on a level with the eyes of the little botanist ! We 
men have outgrown the flower and all its mystical 
loveliness. 

It is among the mosses of the wall, however, 
that the richest harvest of beauty and interest 
may be gathered. Long have my mingled wonder 
and admiration been given to these tiny forms 
of vegetable life — beautiful in every situation — 
spreading on the floor of ancient forests, yielding 
carpets that "steal all noises from the foot," and 



156 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

over which the golden sunbeams chase each other 
in waves of light and shade throughout the long 
summer day — throwing over the decaying tree and 
the mouldering ruin a veil of delicate beauty — 
honoured everywhere of God to perform a most 
important though unnoticed part in this great 
creation. Well do I remember the bright July 
afternoon when their wonderful structure and 
j)eculiarities were first unveiled to me by one 
long since dead, whose cultivated eye saw strange 
loveliness in things which others idly passed, who 
could read Bethel on a pile of stones^ and, seeing 
where God had been, trust in Him, and whose 
simple warm heart was ever alive to the mute 
appeals of humblest wild flower or tiniest moss. 
There was opened up to me that day a new world 
of hitherto undreamt-of beauty and intellectual 
delight. In the structural details of the moss which 
illustrated the lesson I got a glimpse of some 
deeper aspect of the Divine character than mere 
intelligence. Methought I saw Him not as the 
mere contriver or designer, but in His own loving 
nature, having His tender mercies over all His 
works — displaying care for helplessness and minute- 
ness — care for beauty in the works of nature, 
irrespective of final ends or utilitarian purposes. 
Small as the object before me was, I was impressed 
— in the wonder of its structure, at once a means 
and an end, beautiful in itself and performing its 
beautiful uses in nature — not with the limited in- 
genuity of a finite, but with the wisdom and love 



Ill] THEOLOGY OF MOSSES. 157 

of an Infinite Spirit. To that one unforgotten 
lesson, improved by much study of these little 
objects alike in the closet and in the field, I owe 
many moments of pure happiness, the memory of 
which I would not part with for all the costly 
painted pleasures, to gather which, as they ripen 
high on the wall, the world impatiently tramples 
down things that are far sweeter and more 
lasting. 

A careful search will reveal upwards of a score 
of mosses on our garden wall, in almost every 
stage of growth, from a dim film of greenness to 
radiating plumes spreading over the stones, and 
cushion-like tufts projecting out of the crevices, 
and crowned with a forest of pink fruit-covered 
stems. One is amazed at the exuberance of life 
displayed on so small and unpromising a surface. 
It gives us a more graphic idea than we commonly 
possess of the vast and varied resources of creation. 
Though so much alike in their general appearance 
as to be often confounded by a superficial eye, all 
these species are truly distinct ; and when closely 
examined exhibit very marked and striking dif- 
ferences. They are not slightly varying expres- 
sions and modifications of the same Divine idea ; 
but rather different ideas of creative thought. 
Each of them stands for a separate revelation of 
the Infinite Mind ; and the fact that the same 
plan of construction, the same type of character, 
runs through them all, only indicates that there 
is everywhere, in the minutest as well as most 



158 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

conspicuous parts of creation, an undeviating re- 
gard to unity and harmony. 

Prominent among these mosses are the curious 
little Tortulas, found abundantly on every old wall 
— when there is sufficient moisture and shade — but 
loving especially the rude stone gable and thatched 
roof of the Highland cottage, covering them with 
deep cushions of verdure till the whole structure 
appears more like a work of nature than man's 
handiwork. I have always great pleasure in look- 
ing at this tribe of mosses through a lens. The 
leaves are beautifully transparent and reticulated, 
and readily revive, when scorched and shrivelled by 
the sunshine, under the first shower of rain. The 
most noticeable thing about the Tortulas is the 
curious fringe which covers the mouth of the seed- 
vessel. In all the species, of which there are about 
fourteen in this country, the fringe is twisted in 
different ways like the wick of a candle. This 
peculiarity may be easily seen by the naked eye, 
as it projects considerably beyond the fruit-vessel, 
and is of a lighter colour ; but the microscope 
reveals it in all its beauty. It is a wide departure 
from the ordinary type, according to which the 
teeth of the fruit-vessel are made to lock into each 
other, and thus form a wheel-like lid, composed of 
separate spokes, which fill up the aperture. The 
great length of the teeth in the Tortulas prevents 
this arrangement of them ; their tops are therefore 
twisted, as the farmer twists the sheaves at the top 
of his wheat-stack, so as to keep out the rain ; and 






in. ] SCRE W MOSSES. 1 5 9 

this plan seems to answer the purpose as effectually 
as the normal one. Some of the Tortula tufts are 
of a pale reddish colour, as if withered by old age, 
or scorched by the sun. This peculiar blight ex- 
tends in a circular form from the centre to the 
circumference of a tuft, where filmy grey textures, 
like fragments of a spider's web interweaving 
among the leaves, proclaim the presence of an ob- 
scure fungus, in whose deadly embrace the moss 
has perished. Thus even the humblest kinds of 
life are preyed upon by others still humbler in the 
scale ; and perhaps there is no self-existent organic 
structure in nature. Besides this parasite, there 
are other species of life nourished by these tufts. 
If one of them be saturated with moisture, and a 
drop squeezed out upon a glass, and placed under 
a good microscope, the muddy liquid will be found 
swarming with animalculae, little animated cells, 
wandering with electric activity amid the endless 
mazes of the strange forest-vegetation ; and among 
them there is sure to be one or more lordly Roti- 
feras, lengthening and contracting their transparent 
bodies as they glide rapidly out of view, or halting 
a moment to protrude and whirl their wheel-like 
ciliae in the process of feeding — the most interesting 
of microscopic spectacles. 

One of the commonest of the mosses on the wall 
is the little grey Grimmia ; looking, with its brown 
capsules nestling among the leaves, like tiny round 
cushions stuck full of pins. The nerves of the leaves 
project beyond the point, and give an appearance 



160 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

of hoariness to the plant, in fine keeping with 
the antique character of the wall. This moss grows 
on the barest and hardest surfaces — on granite 
and trap rocks, where not a particle -of soil can 
lodge ; and yet every cushion of it rests comfortably 
upon a considerable quantity of earth carefully 
gathered within its leaves, which must have been 
blown there as dust by the wind, or disintegrated 
by its own roots from the substance of the rock. 
Our garden wall displays two or three tiny tufts of 
a curious moss occurring not very frequently on 
moist shady walls built with lime. It is called the 
Extinguisher moss, because the cover of the fruit- 
vessel is exactly like the extinguisher of a candle, 
or the calyx of the yellow garden Escholtzia, We 
have also a few specimens, in the more retired cre- 
vices, of the Bartramia, or apple-moss — one of the 
loveliest of all the species — with its bright green 
hairy cushions and round capsules, like fairy apples. 
It fruits most abundantly in spring, appearing in 
its full beauty when the primrose makes mimic sun- 
shine on the bank, and the cuckoo's voice gives an 
air of enchantment to the hazel copse. A subalpine 
species, it is somewhat uncommon in lowland dis- 
tricts ; but it would be well worth while to grow it 
in a fernery. Its Latin name appropriately per- 
petuates the memory of John Bartram — one of the 
most devoted of American naturalists — a simple 
farmer and self-taught, yet a man of great and 
varied attainments, concealed by a too modest and 
retiring disposition. Linnaeus pronounced him "the 



III.] NAMES OF PLANTS. 161 

greatest natural botanist in the world." It is a 
touching thing to think of the names of scientific 
men, great in their own generation, being linked 
with such obscure and fragile memorials. They 
have passed away, and with them the memory of 
all they achieved ; and nothing now speaks of them 
save a little plant, of which not one in a thousand 
has ever heard, and which only a few naturalists 
see at rare intervals. There are hundreds of such 
names in the nomenclature of botany, worthy of 
a prominent and enduring remembrance, of which 
almost nothing more is known than this simple 
association. It is the plant alone that perpetuates 
them — history and epitaph all in one — like the 
chronology of the antediluvian patriarchs ; and we 
are apt to smile when we read of the gratification 
which the illustrious Linnaeus felt when the little 
bell-flowered LinncBa^ pride of the Swedish woods, 
was baptized with his name — regarding it as a 
pledge of immortality ; for if there had been no- 
thing but this floral link to connect his memory 
with future ages, very few would have known that 
there ever was such a man. 

The line of turf along the top of the wall is a 
perfect Lilliputian garden. It bears a bright and 
interesting succession of plants from January to 
December. The little lichens and mosses claim 
exclusive possession of it during the winter months; 
for these simple hardy forms of life are most luxu- 
riant when the weather is most severe ; they are 
the first to come to any spot, and the last to leave 

M 



162 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

it — growing through sunshine and gloom with meek 
and unruffled serenity. There are whole colonies 
of that most social of all cryptogams, the hair- 
moss, looking, with their stiff and rigid leaves, 
like a forest of miniature aloes ; preserving during 
summer and autumn a uniform diUl green ap- 
pearance, but breaking out in spring into a mul- 
titude of little cups of a brilliant crimson colour, 
nestling among the uppermost leaves, and rivalling 
in beauty the gayest blossoms of flowers. Hardly 
less interesting are the scores of cup-lichens — 
holding up in their mealy sulphur-coloured goblets 
dewy offerings to the sun, like vegetable Gany- 
medes. And the lover of the curious will be sure 
to notice the livid leathery leaves of the dog-lichen, 
tipped with brown shields like finger-nails, that 
grow redder in the piercing Christmas cold — 
bringing us back in fancy to the days of Dr. Mead, 
the famous physician and friend of Pope, Bentham, 
and Newton, by whom it was first brought into 
notice as a remedy for hydrophobia. These and 
numerous other minute forms, too obscure to be 
mentioned, may be seen all the year round ; and 
dim though the sunbeams of winter may be, they 
search them out in their hidden nooks, and stimu- 
late them to life and energy, and the glow of sun- 
rise or sunset, that sets a mountain range on fire, 
rests lovingly on the smallest moss or lichen, inti- 
mating that it too has its place and its relations 
in this wide universe. When the first mild days 
of early spring come, the Draba, or whitlow-grass, 






III.] FLOWERS ON TOP OF GARDEN WALL. 163 

puts forth its tiny white flowers, and greets the 
returning warmth, when there is not a daisy in 
the meadow, or a single golden blossom on the 
whinny hill-side. Then follows a bright array of 
chance wild flowers, wayward adventurers, whose 
seeds the winds have wafted or the birds have 
dropped upon this elevated site, their colours 
deepening as the season advances — old thyme, 
ever new, hanging down in fragrant festoons of 
purple ; yellow bedstraw — the Chrysohoe of flowers 
— like masses of golden foam, scenting the breeze 
with honey sweetness, and ever murmurous with 
bees ; chimes of blue-bells hanging from the wall 
as from a belfry, and tolling with their rich peal 
of bells — which the soul alone can hear — the knell 
of the departing flowers. A fringe of soft meadow- 
grass covers the turf, whose silken greenness forms 
the ground colour on which these bright patterns 
are embroidered ; while its silvery panicles hang 
in all their airy grace over the flowers, like gos- 
samer veils, greatly enhancing their beauty. That 
patch of grass softens no human footfall of care, 
but it is refreshing to the eye, and the robin rests 
upon it, as it pours out its low sweet chant, ac- 
cording well with the sere leaves and the dim 
stillness of autumn, the calm decay of earth, and 
the peace divine of heaven. I love, in the silent 
eve, when there is scarcely a breath in the garden, 
and the sunset is flushing the flowers and purpling 
the hills, to sit near that richly-decorated wall, in 
full view of its autumn flowers, smiling on the lap 

M 2 



164 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. 

of death, for ever perishing, but immortal — joys 
that have come down to us pure and unstained 
from Eden, and amid a world of progress will be 
transmitted without a single leaf being changed 
to the latest generation. Looking sit them, and 
feeling to the full the beauty and wonder of the 
world, I enjoy all that the coming centuries can 
bestow upon the wisest and the happiest of our 
race. Voiceless though they are, they have a 
secret power to thrill my heart to its very core. 
They speak of hope and love, bright as their own 
hue, and vague as their perfume ; they speak of 
the mystery of human life, its beautiful biossoming 
and its sudden fading ; and, more than all, they 
speak of Him, who, holy, harmless, undefiled, and 
separate from sinners, found on earth most con- 
genial fellowship with these emblems of purity 
and innocence ; whose favourite resort was the 
garden of Gethsemane ; whose lesson of faith and 
trust in Providence was illustrated by the growth 
of the lilies ; and who at last — as the Rose of 
Sharon and the Lily of the valley — was laid in 
a sepulchre in a garden, leaving behind there a 
rich and lasting perfume, which makes the grave 
to all who fall asleep in Him a bed of sweet and 
refreshing rest. 



CHAPTER IV. 

A RAMBLE THROUGH NORWAY, THE CRADLE OF 
THE HIGHLAND FLORA. 

Having exhausted the botany of the British hills, 
I was anxious to study our Alpine plants in their 
original centre of distribution, to compare the forms 
which they, present under different conditions of 
soil, climate, exposure, &c. ; and thus ascertain the 
value of the distinctions, not merely among the 
species reputed to be doubtful, but also among 
those commonly considered to be well-established. 
For this purpose I undertook, several summers ago, 
along with some friends, a short tour in Norway. 
I went first to Denmark, a country which holds out 
many inducements to the botanist, and presents 
peculiar facilities for exploring, the expense of 
travelling being extremely moderate, the language 
interposing but few difficulties to one who knows 
broad Scotch and low German, and the plants of 
the woods and marshes being singularly attractive 
and interesting. The " Flora Danica," a splendid 
work of some twenty volumes, exquisitely illus- 
trated, contains a great many species that are 
common in this country; while it gives an admirable 



166 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

idea of the character of the Scandinavian vegetation 
as a whole. 

It was a most lovely day in June when our 
party sailed down the Cattegat, with the coast 
of Sweden on the left, and the coast of Den- 
mark on the right. The sea reflected the deep 
blue sky in all its transparency, and threw back, 
wherever the light fitful breeze raised a passing 
ripple, flashes of brilliant sunshine like a shower 
of diamonds. A large number of vessels, which 
had come from the Baltic, were becalmed, and 
stood motionless upon the mirror-like deep ; each 
ship reflecting its image clearly in the water. 
The sea at this place looked more like a broad 
river than a part of the ocean, showing almost 
every feature of the scenery on both shores with 
the utmost distinctness ; the air being so pure and 
bright that it acted like a telescope. The Swedish 
coast was bold and rocky, but relieved at fre- 
quent intervals by soft patches of cultivation, and 
clusters of red-roofed houses, embosomed among 
dense masses of umbrageous foliage. The Danish 
coast, on the other hand, presented a complete 
contrast. Nothing could be softer and richer than 
the green fields of Zealand which dipped down to 
the sea, with hardly a margin of barren sand or 
rock, shaded by the most luxuriant woods of beech 
and elm, and crowned here and there on the rising 
grounds with picturesque windmills, whose huge 
brown sails lay motionless against the serene back- 
ground of the sky. In front of us, filling up the 



IV.] ELSINORE. 167 

southern horizon, and looking as if reposing upon 
the sea, was the huge castle of Kronborg, at Elsi- 
nore, emerging from the water, and displaying 
more of its architectural details as we drew nearer. 
This spot is classic ground to the Englishman as 
well as to the Dane. It is one of the Meccas of the 
mind, hallowed for ever by the creations of genius. 
No other spot in Denmark is so interesting from 
its many associations with mythology, literature, 
and the national history of England and Denmark. 
With the dark and mysterious vaults of the castle 
is associated the romantic tradition of Holger 
Danske — the Arthurian legend of Denmark ; while 
near at hand there used to be shown a green spot, 
marked by a heap of stones with Runic inscrip- 
tions upon them, called Hamlet's Garden, because 
tradition had here laid the deed to which we are 
indebted for the noblest of Shakespeare's works. 
With Elsinore is imperishably connected Camp- 
bell's spirited description of the siege of Copen- 
hagen, which is one of the finest of his poetical 
efforts. But, like Gertrude of Wyoming, and some 
others of his productions, it is singularly incorrect 
in several of its topographical allusions. He speaks 
of the "wild and stormy steep" of Elsinore, giving 
one the impression that Kronborg Castle stood on 
a lofty precipice overhanging the sea : whereas 
the coast here is as flat and green and richly 
wooded as the promontory of Roseneath on the 
Clyde, which it closely resembles. 

Our sail down the Sound from Elsinore was one 



168 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

of the most enjoyable things possible. The green 
richly-wooded shore, broken at frequent intervals 
by some charmingly situated villa, with its bright 
lawn in front and its red flag hanging idly down 
from its flagstaff, flitted past us like the scenery 
of a fairy dream. As we approached the capital 
the spaces between the trees became wider and 
the country-houses of the merchants more nu- 
merous ; while the increasing number of ships 
and the greater bustle on the water, and the throng 
of carts and carriages on the roads leading to the 
city, almost challenged comparison with the vicinity 
of London itself. Our steamer slowly pushed its 
way in among the shipping and was at last moored 
to the quay ; and after a very cursory and formal 
inspection of our luggage at the custom-house we 
were allowed to land. We drove straight to the 
Phoenix Hotel in the Bred Gade, where we secured 
capital accommodation and seemed to be the only 
guests. After refreshing ourselves we sallied forth 
to view the city. 

Copenhagen is one of the most interesting 
capitals of Europe, and yet it is difficult to point 
out exactly in what the interest connected with 
it lies. Its situation is not picturesque, and its 
buildings are not distinguished for architectural 
beauty, consisting chiefly of lofty brick structures 
covered with stucco, and presenting a very bald 
and monotonous appearance. The people are 
very quiet and primitive in their ways ; and, 
with the exception of the fetes in the Tivoli 



iv.] COPENHA GEN. 1 69 

Gardens and the Alhambra, there are none of 
those fashionable gaieties and amusements which 
are to be found in such abundance in Paris, Berlin, 
or Vienna. Perhaps the serenity and repose of 
the place, and the simplicity of the manners 
and customs, may contribute much to the inde- 
finable charm, as well as the feeling that one is 
beyond the usual tourist ground, and in a region 
comparatively fresh and unknown. In summer 
the sky overhead is peculiarly bright, and the 
sunshine warmer than it is in Britain. Every- 
where in the city there is the gleam of water, 
for it is intersected and islanded in all directions 
by canals and harbours, and the placid Sound 
reflects the overhanging buildings on its bosom, 
and brings the fresh breath of ocean into the 
most crowded market-places. So common is this 
element of beauty, that Copenhagen has been 
called "the Venice of the North." The magni- 
ficence of the avenues of lime and chestnut trees 
that lead from the heart of the city to its suburbs, 
especially when in full blossom, loading the air 
with fragrance, and lighting up the green gloom 
with their white flowery candelabra, requires to 
be seen in order to be appreciated. All ranks 
meet and mingle in the various places of public 
resort on familiar terms, and with mutual con- 
sideration and respect. The society of the better 
classes is fully as cultivated and refined as it is 
anywhere in Europe. We in Britain know very 
little of the literature of Denmark, Hans Christian 



170 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Andersen being almost the only Danish author 
with whose writings we are acquainted. And yet 
in history they have had the two Niebuhrs, father 
and son ; in poetry and general literature, Evald, 
Baggesen, Wessel, Holberg, Grundtvig, Rabbell, 
Heiberg, Molbech, Ingemann, and, greatest of all, 
Oehlenschlager, whose statue, in bronze, is con- 
spicuous in one of the squares. Worsaae, the 
successor of Thomsen, the founder of the unique 
Museum of Northern Antiquities, is one of the 
most accomplished antiquaries in Europe ; Steen- 
strup has a world-wide reputation as a scientific 
discoverer ; and Carsten Hauch, the poet, has in- 
herited the mantle of Oehlenschlager, and continues 
to enrich the poetic stores of his country by his 
dramas and lyrics. But by far the most illustrious 
of the great names of Denmark is that of Thor- 
valdsen. Copenhagen is in fact the city of Thor- 
valdsen — the Mecca of sculpture. His museum 
is the "sight" of the place. His memory is the 
glory of the people. The booksellers' shops are 
full of photographs of his person and works ; and 
copies of his busts and statues, in all sizes and 
materials, may be seen exposed for sale in almost 
every second window. 

Of course we visited the shrine of this remark- 
able hero-worship, and ceased to wonder at the 
popular enthusiasm. Thorvaldsen's museum — and 
also his mausoleum, for he is buried within its 
walls — is situated on an island formed by an en- 
circling canal towards the west end of the city. 



IV. ] THOR VALDSEN'S MUSE UM. 171 

It is so close as almost to form part of the huge 
pile called the Christiansborg Palace, and is a 
square yellowish-looking building in the Egyptian 
style, singularly ugly. The outside is covered with 
pictures, produced by the inlaying of differently- 
coloured cements in the walls, representing on one 
side the hero's triumphant return home, after an 
absence of eighteen years, in the same ship which 
conveyed his works from Rome ; and, on the other 
side, the transport of these works by an enthusi- 
astic crowd to the museum. The fayade represents 
Fame in her fiery car drawn by four horses, in 
bronze. Passing in by a side door, we examined 
with interest the colossal plaster busts, statues, and 
friezes in the entrance hall — models for monuments 
which Thorvaldsen executed for different cities — 
prominent among which was the statue of Pius VII 
seated in the Papal chair, supported by allegorical 
figures. Before inspecting the contents of the 
corridor — Christ's Hall — and the different rooms 
on the ground-floor, the keeper led us to a wide 
court in the centre of the building, paved with 
stones and roofed by the sky, at that moment 
one brilliant flawless sapphire. The surrounding 
walls were painted with palms and other decora- 
tions of antique tombs. " There is his grave," said 
our guide, pointing to a small plot of ivy growing 
almost on a level with the pavement in the midst 
of which it was set. The sun shining in through 
the open roof lingered on the green spot, and bur- 
nished the ivy leaves, while the shadows projected 



172 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

by the walls elsewhere were cool and dark. It 
was touchingly simple. No marble monument, 
no elegiac inscription — not even his name carved 
on the pavement — nothing but the small-leaved 
ivy, clustering closely together, that wreathes alike 
the ruins of human art and the remains of man 
himself with its unfading green. It might be said 
of him, as it was said of Sir Christopher Wren, 
the architect of St. Paul's, " If you wish to see his 
monument, look around." There he reposes amid 
the creations of his genius — no less than six 
hundred and fifty in number, most of which have 
achieved a world-wide reputation. There is no 
other mausoleum like it in the world. No monarch 
ever had such a resting-place as this son of a poor 
ship-carpenter. I longed to pluck a leaf as a 
memorial, but I felt that it would have been a 
species of sacrilege. Gazing with uncovered head 
upon the ivy, I remembered that Thorvaldsen him- 
self had stood on the same spot, and looked down 
for a long time in silence into the open grave, 
which, according to his instructions, the architect 
had made when the building was completed. 
I thought of that wonderful funeral procession 
of which the King of Denmark and his son -formed 
the head, and in which almost the whole nation 
were mourners, and of the garland of flowers woven 
by the hand of the queen, placed beside Thor- 
valdsen's chisel on the coffin. Surely, never was 
artist so honoured in life and death. And this 
little plot of ivy was the end of it all ! 



IV.] THE FRUE KIRKE. 173 

Around the courtyard runs a series of small 
apartments, each opening into the other, and each 
of a different colour and design. The walls are 
neutral-tinted, and the ceilings painted in the 
Pompeian style with brilliant colours and with 
much artistic skill — the work of the pupils of the 
Copenhagen Academy of Arts. Each apartment 
contains a single marble statue or group, while the 
walls are decorated with appropriate bas-reliefs, 
whose playful fancy and endless variety are ex- 
ceedingly charming. The light in each room is so 
arranged as to be as much as possible that of the 
studio, that each statue and bas-relief may be seen 
in the light in which it was executed ; while the 
neutral tint of the walls brings out the exquisite 
whiteness of the marble and the beautiful outlines 
of the forms with the utmost distinctness. The 
arrangement of each apartment is such as to show 
its precious contents to the utmost advantage, and 
to impress them most vividly upon the mind and 
memory. 

That portion of the museum called Christ's Hall 
is one in which the spectator is disposed to linger 
long. It contains casts of the statues of Christ 
and the Apostles ; but, as these can be seen in 
marble in the Frue Kirke or metropolitan church 
of Copenhagen, they should be inspected there 
also, in order to form a correct idea of their match- 
less beauty. This church is one of the most 
interesting in Europe. Its interior is severely 
simple in its architecture, but very grand and 



174 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap, 

imposing in its proportions. It has no other orna- 
ments save the works of Thorvaldsen. These are 
so arranged as to form one harmonious whole — 
an epic in marble from the portico to the altar. 
The pediment is ornamented by an alto-relievo of 
John the Baptist preaching in the' wilderness ; 
while the frieze over the entrance represents the 
triumphant entry of Christ into Jerusalem. On 
both sides of the great central aisle are ranged 
colossal marble statues of the Apostles — six on each 
side ; St. Paul being substituted for Judas. It 
was originally intended that these statues should 
fill niches in the walls of the church, which the 
architect had made for the purpose ; but when 
they came home, and were unpacked, they were 
found much too large for the niches, which had 
consequently to be filled up, and the statues were 
erected where they now stand. Thorvaldsen, it 
was well known, greatly disliked the common 
fashion of exhibiting works of art in niches, which 
he regarded as an ingenious method of lessening 
the labour of the sculptor and concealing defects 
behind. He wished that his statues should be 
seen on all sides, and found complete in every 
part ; and therefore, instead of remonstrating with 
the authorities, which he knew to be useless, he 
adopted the above simple expedient of compelling 
the architect to accede to his wishes. The wisdom 
of this plan is obvious to every one who visits the 
Frue Kirke ; for nothing can exceed the grandeur 
of these twelve colossal figures— -admirably lighted, 



IV.] STATUES OF APOSTLES. 175 

standing out bold and well-defined in all their 
exquisite symmetry, in the centre of the building. 
Each of the Apostles exhibits the individuality of 
character indicated in the Gospels, and the tra- 
ditional style of dress and habit ; but all are noble 
in their simplicity. St. James, with his palmer's 
hat slung behind him, was the sculptor's favourite 
statue ; but were I to give an opinion of their 
respective merits, I should prefer St. John, which, 
to my mind, admirably expresses the manly fire 
and womanly gentleness of Boanerges, the beloved 
disciple. St. Peter and St. Paul were the only 
statues entirely modelled by Thorvaldsen himself. 
The others were modelled from his sketches and 
under his own inspection by a few select pupils ; 
he himself giving the finishing touches before 
they were cast in plaster. It seems that the exe- 
cution of these statues was the darling project of 
his life- No testimonial could have proved half 
so flattering to him as the order to prepare them 
in imperishable marble for the principal church 
of Denmark. " Thus," he was often heard to say, 
" should an artist be honoured." 

We walked between these magnificent figures 
with a feeling of solemnity and awe — an avenue 
of genius leading up to the principal object of 
attraction, the statue of Christ behind the altar. 
In front of it, in the centre of the chancel, is an 
exquisitely lovely statue of a kneeling angel bear- 
ing a large concha on its outstretched arms. This 
forms the font ; and the first child christened from 



176 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

it was that of Professor Bissen— the favourite pupil 
of Thorvaldsen, who acted as sponsor — in the 
presence of the king, queen, and royal family. 
None of the works of Thorvaldsen have attained 
half the celebrity of the statue of Christ ; with 
none of them are we in this country so familiar. 
The first view of it is somewhat disappointing — 
for, contrary to the sculptor's canon of art already 
noticed, it is placed in a niche surmounted by a 
heavy canopy of marble, supported by pillars. The 
projections of this background cast shadows which 
greatly interfere with the proper expression of the 
different parts of the figure. Were they removed 
altogether, and the statue seen in clear outline and 
relief in empty space, like the Apostles, its effect 
would be greatly enhanced. For an adequate idea 
of the Christ one should see the plaster cast in the 
Christ's Hall of the museum, which has no canopy 
or niche to shadow it. There one is lost in ad- 
miration of its matchless beauty and expressive- 
ness. It is the most perfect representation I have 
ever seen of my ideal of our Lord. In my musing 
moments it often haunts me. It is certainly that 
" thing of beauty " which is a "joy for ever." 

Previous to these efforts of Thorvaldsen, sculptors 
had sought their subjects entirely from profane 
history and poetry, and it was feared by his ad- 
mirers that, from his inexperience in this new field, 
and want of religious susceptibility, he w T ould not 
be able to do justice to sacred subjects. But the 
result agreeably disappointed all ; and though the 



IV 



STATUE OF CHRIST. 177 



artist, in common with many other men of 
genius, it is more than probable, regarded only 
the poetical aspect and not the saving in- 
fluence of Christianity, and treated the Founder 
of it and His Apostles as he would have done 
the beautiful and noble creations of Homers 
genius, still no one can gaze upon his statue of 
Christ unmoved. It was indeed a labour of love 
to him. No other hands touched it save his own. 
The preliminary sketches occupied him a long 
time, and so many were destroyed before he was 
satisfied, that he almost despaired of succeeding. 
At first he represented our Saviour with His arms 
raised to heaven as if in prayer, but afterwards 
he altered the model to its present attitude, as if 
in the act of blessing the assembled throng of 
worshippers, and uttering the invitation from St. 
Matthew's Gospel, engraved- on the pedestal, 
Kommer til mig^ " Come unto Me." The drapery 
and attitude are singularly graceful, while the ex- 
pression of the countenance is exquisitely lovely. 
A holy superhuman calm broods over every fea- 
ture, speaks through that eye of sorrow, and reigns 
on that august brow. It is as perfect a representa- 
tion in material form as man can make of the face 
of Him who endured the contradiction of sinners 
against Himself, who pursued, amidst ills past 
finding out, the even tenor of His way, as placidly 
as the earth turns upon its axis, while winds and 
waves are raging around it, and who at the close 
of life said to His disciples, " My peace I give unto 

N 



1 78 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

you : not as the world giveth give I unto you." 
And yet, wonderfully perfect as the statue seems, 
it is recorded of Thorvaldsen that, when he had 
finished it, he was overwhelmed with melancholy, 
and when asked the reason, he touchingly replied, 
" My genius is decaying." " What do, you mean ?" 
said the visitor. " Why, here is my statue of 
Christ ; it is the first of my works that I have 
ever felt satisfied with. Till now my idea has 
always been far beyond what I could execute. But 
it is no longer so. I shall never have a great idea 
again." This, it may be remarked, has been the 
case with all men of true genius, whether express- 
ing themselves in form, or word, or colour. It is 
only God Himself, as it has been finely said, who 
could look down upon His creation and behold 
that it was all very good. 

Having examined the principal objects of in- 
terest on the ground-floor of the museum, and the 
casts of the statues and bassi-relievi in Christ's 
Hall, which are executed in marble in the Frue 
Kirke, we went upstairs to the second story. The 
rooms of this floor are filled with minor works of 
art, and with an immense number of busts, some of 
which are admirably done, while others are utterly 
unworthy of the genius of the sculptor. We were 
specially interested in a plaster cast of the bust of 
Sir Walter Scott, and in a model of the famous 
statue of Lord Byron, which was refused admission 
into St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey, and was 
ultimately placed in the Library of Trinity College, 



IV.] BYRON AND SIR WALTER SCOTT. 179 

Cambridge. Hans Christian Andersen graphically 
describes the interview between Byron and Thor- 
valdsen in Rome in his Mahrchen meines Lebens. 
He says that, when the artist was modelling the 
bust, "Lord Byron sat so uneasily in his chair, 
and kept changing the expression of his features 
to such a degree, that he was at length obliged 
to request him to keep his face still, and not to 
look so unhappy." On Byron's making answer 
that such was the usual expression of his coun- 
tenance, Thorvaldsen merely replied, " Indeed," 
and went on with his work, producing an excellent 
likeness. Byron was dissatisfied with the ex- 
pression ; but Thorvaldsen retorted that it was 
his own fault, he would look so miserable. A far 
more favourable impression was produced by the 
visit of the great Scottish novelist in 1831. Though 
Sir Walter Scott strangely neglected, during his 
stay in Rome, to visit the Vatican, where so many 
of the greatest statues and paintings in the world 
are to be seen, he was nevertheless very anxious 
to make the acquaintance of Thorvaldsen in his 
studio. Owing to ignorance of each other's lan- 
guage, the interview between the two great men 
was very short and awkward. But it made up 
in warmth for what it lacked in elegance and in- 
telligibility. By signs and gestures, and much 
pressure of hands, they strove to convey their 
mutual regard ; and when they parted they affec- 
tionately embraced, and followed each other with 
their eyes as long as possible. 

N 2 



180 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

What strikes one chiefly in passing through the 
rooms of the museum is the enormous amount of 
work which Thorvaldsen accomplished. He was 
constitutionally lazy, and took a great deal of 
pleasuring in life, but he has notwithstanding left 
behind him upwards of seven hundred works of 
art, many of which required great labour and 
delicate handling. His life was indeed exception- 
ally long, for he died in 1844 in the seventy-fourth 
year of his age, and he began his art-career when 
very young. The explanation usually given of the 
circumstance is, that he constantly kept a large 
number of pupils, and economized his own labour 
by availing himself of their aid in preparing models 
and carving statues up to a certain point, when he 
gave the finishing touches himself. But, notwith- 
standing this help, he must have been very in- 
dustrious to have sketched and finished such a 
great variety of subjects, and executed so many 
statues single-handed. Though lounging often in 
idleness and mixing freely in all the gaieties of 
the highest society, yet, when the glow of creative 
energy seized him, he worked like one of those 
trolls or brownies in Scandinavian folk-lore, who 
were able to build a city in a single night. He 
himself has told us, regarding his noble statue of 
Mercury, what was true of most of his productions. 
" I immediately began modelling ; I worked all the 
evening, till at my usual hour I went to bed. But 
my idea would not let me rest. I was forced to get 
up again. I struck a light and worked at my model 



IV.] RELICS OF THORVALDSEX. 181 

for three or four hours, after which I again went to 
bed. But again I could not rest ; again I was forced 
to get up, and have been working ever since." 

A suite of rooms in the upper story of the 
museum is devoted to a valuable and instructive 
collection of paintings, Etruscan and Roman relics, 
antique coins, bronzes, vases, and other curiosities 
which Thorvaldsen had amassed during his long 
residence in Rome. One small apartment contains 
the furniture of his sitting-room, arranged exactly 
as it was when he last occupied it. A Dutch clock 
on a table still marks the hour of his death, when, 
in accordance with a superstitious feeling common 
to all Northern nations, it was stopped for ever. 
The cast of a bust of Luther, which he commenced 
on the morning of that day when his lifeless body 
was carried home from the Royal Theatre, stands 
beside it, and near at hand the black slate easel 
on which a day or two before he had drawn in 
white chalk a sketch for a new bas-relief called 
" The Genius of Sculpture." These affecting relics 
showed how death by apoplexy overtook him in 
the full plenitude of his powers, and when his 
fruitful mind was still meditating future works. 
Of the several portraits of himself in the gallery 
of paintings, we were particularly interested in the 
one by his faithful friend Horace Vernet. It is 
said to be an admirable likeness, representing the 
old man with a broad, open, fresh-coloured face, 
keen light-blue eyes, and long white hair, standing 
out like a halo all round his head. 



182 



HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. 



CHAP. 






The other great sight of Copenhagen is the 
Museum of Northern Antiquities. This institu- 
tion is quite unique, and has been a powerful 
agency in the education of the people of Denmark. 
It is worth ones while to come all the way from 
America for the express purpose - of seeing it. 
I was fortunate in having a letter of introduction 
to Mr. Worsaae. He very kindly opened the Mu- 
seum to our party, although it was a closed day, 
and accompanied us through all the rooms, ex- 
plaining to us the various objects in the most 
interesting manner, and in the most fluent and 
idiomatic English. Several foreigners took ad- 
vantage of the opening of the Museum, and joined 
us in our tour of inspection. Among them was 
a French gentleman, a Norwegian lady, a German 
professor, and a Russian count. Our host addressed 
each in turn in his or her own language with the 
ease and correctness of a native. The objects in 
the Museum are arranged in different suites of 
apartments, according as they belong to the stone, 
the bronze, the iron, and the mediaeval periods. 
In the rooms devoted to the illustration of the 
stone period, there is an immense variety of arrow- 
heads, spear-heads, hatchets, sacrificial knives, and 
stone implements of all kinds. Many of them are 
most beautifully polished, and have their edges 
ornamented w r ith zigzag fretwork, which must have 
been exceedingly difficult to execute, when we 
consider that some are composed of the hardest 
granite, and that the only tools which those who 



IV 



.] OVERLAPPING PERIODS, 183 



executed them possessed were flint knives and 
stone axes. In the rooms devoted to the bronze 
period there are numerous examples of swords, 
daggers, drinking-cups, and articles of household 
use and of personal ornament The arrangement 
of these relics into distinct periods has, however, 
no true foundation in history. It is purely arti- 
ficial and arbitrary. The different periods overlap 
each other. We find traces of the stone period far 
on into the bronze period ; and articles of bronze 
have been found coeval with stone celts. In the 
time of Joshua, when iron was in common use, and 
the civilization of the world was far advanced, the 
rite of circumcision was performed, on one occasion 
at least, with flint knives ; and these knives were 
buried in the tomb of Joshua. And at the present 
day we find stone implements used by savage tribes 
inhabiting regions outside the pale of civilization. 
If we take the whole world into consideration, we 
find existing contemporaneously, the rudest im- 
plements of stone and flint, and the most perfect 
products of the highest skill and luxury. In the 
remote Hebrides we find at the present day, exist- 
ing amid all the perfection of the mechanical arts 
in our country, specimens of pottery and of agri- 
cultural and household implements, as primitive as 
any that we dig up from the so-called bronze or 
stone period, or find in the most savage islands 
of the Pacific. No arguments for the antiquity of 
the human race can therefore be founded upon 
the mere arrangement of these stone and bronze 



184 



HO LIB A YS ON HIGH LANDS. 



[chap. 



remains. Evidences of man's highest skill and in- 
tellectual power may exist contemporaneously with 
tokens of his lowest and most savage condition. 
The progress of mankind, we must remember, has 
never been in a straight line, and has never taken 
the whole race along with it. While there has been 
a central current going steadily forward, there 
have been great stagnant marshes on either side, 
or" eddies of backwater returning to the hills. 

Among the remains of the bronze and early iron 
periods, are very massive bracelets and anklets of 
solid gold of the purest quality. The women who 
wore them must have been perfect Amazons, and 
fit wives and daughters for those powerful Norse- 
men to whom belonged the fearful weapons in the 
Museum, which few men in these degenerate days 
could wield. These gold ornaments were found 
by peasants while digging peats in the northern 
bogs of Denmark. The Danes have quite a pas- 
sion for archaeology, for everything that illustrates 
the past history of their country ; and the govern- 
ment encourages this taste in the most liberal and 
enlightened way, by giving to the finder of any 
interesting relic of antiquity, a sum a little in 
-excess of its intrinsic value. Consequently the 
peasants have every inducement, pecuniary and 
patriotic, to forward their discoveries to Copen- 
hagen, where they are deposited in the Museum 
of Northern Antiquities, for the inspection of all. 
And thus a noble collection has been accumulated, 
which admirably illustrates the ancient history of 



IV 



.] BEECH-WOODS OF DENMARK, 185 



Europe, which is invaluable for the purposes of 
science, and of which even the humblest inhabi- 
tants of the country feel proud. 

The environs of Copenhagen are eminently beau- 
tiful and attractive. A short distance by rail from 
the outskirts commence the magnificent beech- 
forests of Klampenborg. These beech-woods are 
the most remarkable feature of Denmark. They 
clothe the whole face of the country, except the 
cultivated parts, giving it a soft, rich, languid look, 
exceedingly pleasing to the eye of one accustomed 
to the bleak hills and pine-woods of the Scottish 
Highlands. Hardly any other tree besides the 
beech is seen in these forests now ; but it was not 
always so. Denmark is a palimpsest of three dis- 
tinct layers of arboreal vegetation. In the lowest 
stratum of the bogs trunks and other portions of 
Scotch fir trees are found : above this layer is a 
distinctly marked stratum in which nothing but 
remains of oak occur ; while the surface of the 
country is covered with flourishing beech-forests. 
These changes in the character of the woods indi- 
cate corresponding changes in the character of the 
climate ; for the oak is now a rare tree in the 
country, and the Scotch fir is hardly ever seen, 
being unsuited to the altered circumstances. The 
age of these extinct forests is a much-disputed 
question. Mr. Worsaae showed me several very 
interesting human relics dug from these deposits, 
which must have belonged to the Bronze period, 
and probably dated no further back than the time 



186 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap 

of Abraham. The skulls found in the pine stratum 
are round and short, having a very prominent 
ridge over the eyes. These brachycephalic skulls 
point to the Celtic migration from Asia to Northern 
Europe, and are accompanied by celts and stone im- 
plements. The skulls found in the oak stratum are 
dolichocephalic, or long-headed, and are identical 
with those of the Teutonic race now in possession 
of most of Europe. It is probable that all the 
changes implied by these remains may have taken 
place within a much shorter period than is supposed, 
and that the antiquity of the Danish Kjokken- 
modings, like that of the Swiss Pfahlbauten, has 
been unduly stretched. 

But apart from archaeological speculations, which 
in such spots are irresistibly suggested, nothing 
can be more delightful than a ramble among the 
beech-woods in the neighbourhood of Copenhagen 
on a hot summer day. The shadows are so cool 
and deep ; the belts of golden light that lie across 
the greensward at every opening among the trees 
are so bright and sunny ; the far-stretching vistas 
so mysterious and seductive to the imagination ; 
and the trunks and branches of the beeches so 
smooth, round, and well filled, and so covered with 
heavy masses of beautiful transparent foliage, that 
you feel as if in an enchanted place. You think 
longingly of the long-ago times when an English 
county merited its beautiful poetical name of 
" Buckinghamshire." " the home of the beech- 
trees ;" beech being the modern form of the old 



IV.] RANGE OF THE BEECH-TREE. 187 

Teutonic buck or buck 1 . From a rising ground, 
through a break in the forest, you catch a glimpse 
of the blue waters of the Sound flashing in the 
sunlight, with white, spirit-like sails flitting to and 
fro over its placid bosom : you thus feel that the 
place is haunted for ever by harmonies of winds 
and waves — visited by delicate influences from 

1 There are some interesting peculiarities in the geographical dis- 
tribution of the beech. It is the tree which ascends highest on the 
Apennines, forming large forests immediately below the zone of 
the Alpine plants. On Gran Sasso d'ltalia, the loftiest peak of the 
range, it flourishes luxuriantly at a height of 6000 feet above the 
Adriatic, not far from the line of perpetual snow. On other moun- 
tain chains it is the birch or the pine which ascends the highest, 
and adjoins the zone of the Alpine flora. In Norway the beech 
is unknown, save in the extreme south and in the plains ; while 
in the Alps it occurs only in the lower valleys. On the Apennines 
it ascends several thousand feet above the region in which corn can 
be cultivated, and where man lives permanently; and yet corn is 
grown as far north as Lapland, and a few patches of it ripen even 
at Hammerfest. The reason of this is that the beech is affected 
by the heat of the whole year, while the corn depends upon the 
summer heat. The heat of summer in the Arctic circle is much 
greater than at a height of 6coo feet in Italy, while the cold of 
winter is much more severe. Altitude and latitude, which corre- 
spond so far as herbaceous plants depending upon summer heat are 
concerned, do not correspond so far as trees which depend upon 
a certain degree of heat all the year round are concerned. It is 
because of the somewhat uniform annual temperature of the Ant- 
arctic regions — less warm in summer and less cold in winter — 
that the Evergreen beech (Fagus Forsteri) forms the characteristic 
woods of Terra del Fuego, and the Antarctic beech grows even 
farther south in the Antarctic regions, while no species of beech 
can flourish in the extreme climate of the Arctic regions. The 
abundance and beauty of the beech in Denmark is doubtless owing 
to the same cause. 



183 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [CHAP* 

sea and land. Occasionally, at the end of a vista 
among the trees, a solitary deer may be seen 
feeding, or pausing to gaze at the stranger, and 
gliding silent as a shadow into the remoter re- 
cesses. The ground is everywhere enamelled with 
the wild flowers which we see in our own wood- 
lands ; and every sight and sound are so homelike 
that it is difficult to realize the idea that one is in 
a foreign land. I saw large patches of the yellow 
wood-anemone (A. Ranuncidoides) and of the guirt 
fugls melk (yellow bird's milk), Omithogalum he- 
ieuM) but they were both past flowering. When 
in full bloom, in spring, they make the woods quite 
a California. In this primitive country almost 
every plant is known to the peasant, and asso- 
ciated with some quaint incident. 

I was greatly struck with the beauty of the 
lichens, mosses, and fungi, which grew upon the 
trunks of the trees, and especially upon the fallen 
ones, in moist and shady spots. Many of the 
beeches w r ere sprinkled with the rich yellow pow- 
der of the lichen Calicium ; others were covered 
with the chocolate patches of the tamarisk scale- 
moss ; while on several prostrate trunks I found the 
curious fungus Dczdalea growing to an enormous 
size, and exhibiting on the under side its intricate 
sinuosities, like a Chinese carving in ivory. I 
gathered some foreign plants which afford an 
illustration of the curious way in which the flora 
of one country finds its way to another. When 
the statues which Thorvaldsen sent from Rome 



IV.] PLANTS OF THE BEECH-WOODS. 189 

were unpacked in Copenhagen, several flowers 
sprang up very soon after in the neighbourhood 
formerly unknown. It seems that the sculptures 
were carefully wrapped round with bands of hay 
from the Campagna, containing the seeds of plants 
peculiar to Italy. Might not the incident be 
regarded as typical of Thorvaldsen's own genius, 
.which had grown and been developed in the 
Eternal City, and at last blossomed in old age in 
his native place ? I observed in moist rocky dells, 
among the moss, great quantities of the Primula 
farinosa. The leaves and stalks were powdered 
with the characteristic lemon-dust, but the beau- 
tiful lilac flowers were overpassed, and fruit formed. 
In early May the market-women come into town, 
bearing basket-loads of this lovely flower tied in 
little nosegays. The glens of Lyngby and Ramlosa 
are covered with it in spring. Many spots in the 
neighbourhood of Copenhagen in this delicious 
season are like the Vale of Tempe. Indeed, at 
any time, nothing can be more soothing to ruffled 
nerves than the serenity and loveliness of Danish 
scenery. Doctors should send their patients, jaded 
and excited by the hurry and over-work of our 
large towns, to these peaceful drowsy retreats, 
where the very spirit of repose has made its home 
and the mere fact of existence is a delight. 
Denmark is indeed a land where it seems always 
afternoon ; and the lotus-eater can wander day 
after day among its beech-woods, and never weary 
of the monotony. 



190 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

But we tore ourselves away ere the beech-woods 
had completely bewitched us with their sorceries. 
More bracing and stimulating work awaited us 
among the dark fjords, snowy fjelds, and pine- 
forests of Norway. This country possesses pe- 
culiar interest to a Scotchman, not only because 
it is the original home of the Highland flora, but 
chiefly on account of its former intimate connexion 
with the northern and eastern parts of Scotland. 
Colonies of Norsemen occupied these parts suffi- 
ciently long to effect a radical change in the 
appearance and manners of the primitive inhab- 
itants — transforming the undersized Celt, afraid 
of the sea, into the bold, adventurous, finely- 
developed seaman. From this source were derived 
the fair hair, blue eyes, and straight limbs which 
characterise a large proportion of our seafaring 
population, as well as the names so common 
among them, ending in son^ Anderson, Henderson, 
Johnston, Paterson — which are tl^e most frequent 
at the present day in Norway — and the peculiar 
terms applied to the Scottish firths, bays, and 
promontories. With pleasant hopes kindled by 
these associations, we embarked on Wednesday, 
25th June, on board the Viken, a Government 
steamer regularly plying in the postal service 
between Copenhagen and Christiania. Our pas- 
sage was a somewhat stormy one among the 
white waves of the Cattegat. But after we had 
passed Gottenburg, on the Swedish coast, at which 
we had called about two o'clock next morning, 



IV.] ARRIVAL AT CHRISTIAN/A. 191 

when the town was buried in profound repose, all 
the rest of the voyage was calm and beautiful, and 
there was nothing to mar our high enjoyment of 
the wonderful intricacy and picturesque shores and 
islands of the Christiania Fjord. Retiring to rest 
after leaving Moss glowing with the indescribable 
hues of a northern sunset, we awoke from a very 
unrefreshing sleep about six o'clock on Friday 
morning, and found the steamer quietly moored 
to the quay of Christiania. 

The morning was very bright and sunny. 
Hastily dressing ourselves and collecting our traps, 
we stepped ashore, glad enough to exchange the 
heaving deep for solid earth, and the coffin-like 
airless berths of the steamer for a limitless sup- 
ply of fresh air. blowing from the hills of Gamle 
Norge. A few leisurely porters and drowsy 
government officials, blinking in the sun, were 
lounging about ; and neither bustle nor business 
reminded us that we were standing on the quay 
of a metropolis. After waiting awhile, a custom- 
house officer condescended to examine our lug- 
gage, with his hands in his pockets and a cigar 
in his mouth ; and as we carried no contraband 
goods, not even a flask of Glenlivet or a canister 
of " bird's-eye," we were let off very easily, and 
our crumpled toggery was speedily repacked. We 
tried two of the hotels which the English are in 
the habit of frequenting, but fortunately for our 
purses we found them quite full, and were at last 
obliged to take refuge in the Hotel Scandinavie, 



192 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

where we were charged something like native 
prices, and had no reason to complain either of 
the fare or the attention. We were told that it 
was a great gala day in Christiania, a market 
being held there called St. Hans' Fair, at which 
timber- merchants from every part, of Norway 
meet to buy and sell wood. We should certainly 
not have found out this fact ourselves, for the 
streets appeared to us exceedingly quiet and 
deserted, only two or three people at long intervals 
walking very slowly along the rough pavement, 
smoking the eternal cigar, and wearing an air of 
leisureliness and repose, as if they were the heirs 
expectant of time, most provoking to a fidgety 
and active Englishman. Most of the population 
seemed to have congregated in our hotel, over- 
flowing bedrooms, stairs, and lobbies, treading on 
each other's toes, distracting the hapless waiters 
by their multifarious commands, and filling all 
the air with a confused clattering of unknown 
tongues. 

Christiania does not awaken much interest in 
a stranger's mind. It is a very small city to be a 
capital, and none of the buildings are either ancient 
or imposing ; most of the picturesque log-houses 
that used to exist having been destroyed by fire 
and replaced by plain brick buildings without any 
architectural features. There are few shops, and 
these generally small and shabby, dealing in mis- 
cellaneous ware, like a druggist's emporium in an 
English country village. The best places of busi- 



IV.] POLITENESS OF THE PEOPLE, 193 

ness are in the Kirke-gaden ; but the Norwegians 
have so little skill and taste in displaying their 
goods in the windows, that even the finest shops 
present but a poor appearance outside. Some 
beautiful pieces of filigree silver, of native metal 
and manufacture, may be purchased in this quarter, 
as well as very ingenious specimens of Norwegian 
carving, an art in which the inhabitants, especially 
of Telemarken, rival the Swiss and Germans ; but 
the prices to English visitors are generally very 
high. The people in their intercourse with one 
another and in their business transactions outdo 
the Parisians themselves in politeness. Their hats 
are more frequently in their hands than on their 
heads ; and the magnificent sweep of the bow with 
which one tradesman acknowledges the presence 
of another in the street always elicited my admira- 
tion. The free and independent British tourist, who 
persists in wearing his hat alike under the dome 
of St. Peter's at Rome and in a Christiania curi- 
osity shop, suffers immensely in comparison ; and 
a blush of guilt rose to my own cheek on more 
than one occasion, when, in momentary forgetful- 
ness that I was not at home, I entered a shop with 
my. hat on, and was recalled to painful conscious- 
ness by the significant pantomime of the shop- 
keeper. If slaves cannot breathe in England, 
Quakers certainly could not exist in Norway! 

The only buildings that are at all handsome are 
the Storthing or House of Commons, where the 
Parliament of Norway meets once every three 

O 



194 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

years to transact during three months a very large 
amount of gossip and a very small amount of busi- 
ness ; the university, with its library and museums ; 
and the palace of the king, situated on a command- 
ing eminence above the town, and surrounded by 
gardens kept in a very slovenly style,, the walks of 
which are a favourite promenade of the citizens in 
the cool of the evening. We visited this palace. It 
was guarded by a solitary shabbily-dressed sentinel, 
who paced slowly backwards and forwards with 
a slouching gait, stopping every ten minutes to rub 
a lucifer match against the wall of the building and 
light a penny cigar. We asked him if we could 
get admittance, and he pointed out to us a small 
side door, at which we knocked. A tall, fat, good- 
natured woman appeared, and, conducting us 
through a series of underground passages, brought 
us up to the principal entrance-hall, from whence 
we followed her over the whole building. We found 
the palace of Charles XV, since dead, very similar 
to other palaces. There were great rooms of state 
with much bizarre gilding and little comfort ; and 
there were small rooms with little gilding and great 
snugness. The private apartments of the king, 
queen, and heir to the throne were very plainly 
furnished ; and the bedrooms in which royalty 
takes the sleep that, according to the Turkish pro- 
verb, meikes pashas of us all, had small curtainless 
beds like sofas, and couches draped with a very 
threadbare-looking tartan of the clan M c Tavish. 
I suppose the descendant of Bernadotte, on the 



IV.] ENVIRONS OF CHRISTIANIA. 195 

same etymological principle that Donizetti was 
proved to be the Italianized form of the Celtic 
Donald Izzet, was a ninety-second cousin of some 
Highland family, and therefore took the tartan. 
The view of the fjord and surrounding country 
which we obtained from the leaden roof was truly 
magnificent, and decidedly the most regal thing 
about the palace. A wide expanse of sea stretched 
out before us, calm and blue as an inland lake, 
studded with innumerable islands, covered with 
ships and boats sailing in every direction, each 
floating double, ship and shadow, in the trans- 
parent water, and bounded in the distance by 
an irregular grouping of picturesque hills, which 
gave the fjord a varied outline like the Lake of 
the Four Cantons in Switzerland. Immediately 
below was the old romantic castle of Aggershuus, 
situated on a bold promontory of the sea, and 
adorned with fine avenues of linden-trees along the 
ramparts. This castle was besieged and taken by 
the redoubtable Charles XII of Sweden, and now 
contains the regalia and the state records of Nor- 
way. Close to the old town rose up the hill of 
Egeberg, richly cultivated and wooded to the top, 
and commanding an extensive prospect on every 
side. Westwards, the white tower of Oscar's Hall 
— a summer residence of the King of Norway, and 
containing a fine series of Tidemand's paintings — 
peeped out with picturesque effect from the midst 
of a perfect nest of foliage, while the landscape in 
that direction was perfected by the snow-capped 

O % 



196 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

mountains of Valders and Telemarken visible in 
the far background. Everywhere there were rich 
woods, not only of pine and fir, but of deciduous 
trees, elm, plane, ash, lilacs, and laburnums, grow- 
ing in the utmost luxuriance. On every side there 
were cultivated fields, picturesque groups of rocks, 
gleaming waters, rugged hills, and elegant villas 
embosomed among fruit-trees and flowering shrubs. 
I know of no town that has so many country- 
houses scattered around it ; and it would be dif- 
ficult to say which of them is most beautifully 
situated. Each has its own separate view, its own 
woody knoll, and cultivated field, and rocky islet, 
and vista of the fjord. And this wondrous com- 
bination of art and nature makes the environs of 
Christiania quite a fairy scene. The sky, too, was 
so mellow and blue, the air so clear and sunny, 
and the colouring of the landscape so intense and 
glowing, that I almost fancied myself in Italy 
instead of on the 6oth degree of north latitude — 
in the parallel of the Shetland Islands. The only 
scenery which the view from the palace suggested 
to me was the southern extremity of the Lake of 
Geneva, looking across the outskirts of the town 
to the Jura mountains ; but the comparison is 
greatly in favour of Christiania. 

We paid a visit, as in duty bound, to Mr. Bennett, 
who is the great authority on matters Norwegian 
to all Englishmen — reverenced by them almost as 
much as Murray or Bradshaw. He lives amid a 
curious collection of novels, " Leisure Hours." old 



IV.] ' MR. BENNETT. 197 

broken-down carrioles, silver drinking-cups, and a 
lot of mixed pickles and Worcester sauce ; the last 
supposed to be absolutely essential to the existence 
of the British tourist in Norway. He acts in so 
many capacities that he must be a kind of universal 
genius, being antiquary, librarian, purveyor, cus- 
tom-house agent, Dens ex machina of the Chris- 
tiania Carriole Company, and last, not least, 
churchwarden and collector of subscriptions for 
the English chapel in town. He has done, I 
have heard, many kind and disinterested acts to 
strangers introducing themselves to him ; and he 
has been repaid in too many instances by dis- 
honesty and ingratitude. We did not need the 
aid of his topographical knowledge, however, as 
we had previously sketched out our tour with 
remarkable fulness, and were determined to adhere 
to the programme in every particular. We there- 
fore contented ourselves with buying from him the 
last edition of the " Lomme reiseroute," or Govern- 
ment road-book, and a translation or commentary 
upon it in English, called " Bennett's Handbook," 
both of which we found exceedingly useful, indeed 
indispensable, on the journey ; for an appeal to the 
prices of posting marked in the " Lomme reise- 
route" was never disputed by the station-house 
keepers, and it saved much loss of temper and 
waste of time in haggling about payment. 

Having seen all that was to be seen in the way 
of curiosities about Christiania — which certainly was 
not much — we took out tickets on the following 



198 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Saturday for a short ride of forty-five miles on 
one of the only two railways in all Norway, as 
far as Eidsvold, the Norwegian Runnymede. The 
railway was constructed by British navvies, and 
the railway carriages were made in Birmingham. 
Proud of our country's services to humanity, we 
rolled along at the rate of eight miles an hour, 
over a broken country of pine-woods, lakes, and 
rocky foregrounds, till we came at last to the 
scene of the Convention which framed the pre- 
sent admirable constitution of Norway. Here we 
embarked on the Miosen Lake in a steamer, boast- 
ing the funny name of Skibladner, so called from 
Odin's magical pocket-ship. This lake is the 
largest in Norway, being 63 miles long and about 
7 broad. It is very highly . praised by the Nor- 
wegians, and the scenery on its banks is considered 
the finest they have. This is owing, however, 
to the same law of contrast which made the Swiss 
peasant say to the Dutchman, when told that 
Holland had not a single mountain, " Ah ! yours 
must be a fine country." The Norwegians have 
so little arable land, and such an overwhelming 
preponderance of huge barren mountains and rocky 
plateaux, that the scarcer article as usual is most 
valued, and the profitable is preferred to the 
picturesque. The proportion of soil under culture, 
or capable of being cultivated, to the entire extent 
of the country is not more than one to one 
hundred ; while upwards of forty per cent, of the 
surface of the southern half exceeds 3000 feet 



IV.] THE MIOSEN LAKE. 199 

above the level of the sea. We were a good deal 
disappointed in the scenery, having heard it com- 
pared to Lake Como, with which it has not a single 
feature in common. It is a fine sheet of water for 
boating purposes and for the transport of timber, 
through many rafts of which the steamer in some 
places fought its way ; but the shores at the lower 
extremity are banks of bare clay, crowned on the 
top with a few miserable birches, and farther up 
the land around it lies low, and is thickly dotted 
with red wooden farmhouses and variegated by 
potato and corn fields ; while the hills beyond are 
of no great elevation, and are covered with inter- 
minable forests of sombre pines, which produce a 
melancholy impression by their extreme monotony 
— especially when, as is usually the case, the sky 
overhead is grey and cloudy. A species of fresh- 
water herring, somewhat like the Powan of Loch- 
lomond, or the Gwyniad of the English and Welsh 
lakes, is caught in great quantities in its waters. 
We landed at about half-past nine at night at a 
pretty large village at the head of the lake, called 
Lillehammer, amid the silver splendours of a very 
singular sunset. This village is built upon an 
elevated terrace, a considerable distance above the 
shore of the lake, and commands a most extensive 
view. Bare brown mountains sprinkled with 
patches of snow gird the horizon, and give an air 
of Alpine loneliness and wildness to a landscape 
that would otherwise have been too rich and 
luxuriant. The houses, which are all built of wood, 



200 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

are very clean-looking, and neatly painted in pale 
colours of pink, yellow, and green, which are fre- 
quently renewed. Many of them are surrounded 
by gardens and orchards, or embosomed among 
clumps of white-stemmed birches and purple lilacs. 
In every window of every house, even, the poorest, 
are pots of the most brilliant flowers, roses, calceo- 
larias, verbenas, geraniums, petunias, and many 
other plants, which one would not expect to see 
in such a latitude. They are most carefully and 
skilfully tended ; and even in a duke's conservatory 
such perfectly-formed and gorgeous blossoms are 
rare. The love of flowers is quite a passion with 
the Norwegians. Go where you will — in the large 
towns and in the loneliest parts of the country — 
you will find' the windows of the houses filled with 
the choicest plants, even the humblest making 
an effort to grow something green and brightly- 
coloured, that may remind them of a world of 
beauty beyond their own bleak hills. A philo- 
sopher like him who made out murder to be one 
of the fine arts, who is fond of tracing the final 
causes of human phenomena, might find the reason 
of this universal floral mania an interesting subject 
of speculation. It may be caused by the love of 
contrast ; the eye seeking relief in the bright 
colours of roses, geraniums, and calceolarias, from 
the extreme monotony of the green pine-forests 
and dark brown fjelds. At a*ny rate, the red and 
other gay colours of the dwelling-houses, and the 
Oriental brilliancy of the costumes of the people, 



IV.] • LILLEHAMMER. 201 

may fairly, I think, be attributed to this cause. 
Another custom common in Norway is strewing 
the floors of houses and churches with the 
aromatic foliage-laden branches of fir, birch, Dutch 
myrtle, and lime, w r hose fragrance renders the 
atmosphere of Norwegian interiors on a hot sum- 
mer day peculiarly pleasant and refreshing. The 
custom is not only beautiful in itself, bringing 
into man's home the brightness and infinite sugges- 
tiveness of the forest, the free pure life of nature ; 
but it is also healthful, for the odours of the fresh 
foliage must go far to neutralize the noxious ex- 
halations of human economy. A similar custom 
used to exist in our own country, but it has 
now disappeared even in the remotest districts ; 
and artificial carpets have everywhere superseded 
the beautiful natural products of the woodland. 

We spent the Sunday in the village, and had 
the privilege of worshipping in a little Lutheran 
church not far from Hamar's inn, where we stayed. 
It was a welcome rest to body and soul. The 
day was very beautiful, calm and soft, with 
wandering gleams of sunshine breaking through 
the grey clouds, and illuminating here and there 
the shadowy pine-woods and the cornfields with 
a more vivid greenness. The lake lay still as a 
mirror below, with belts of light and shade crossing 
its bosom, and yellow timber rafts lying motionless 
along its shores. At intervals the mellow mono- 
tone of the cuckoo, whose Norwegian name gowk 
is the same as the Scotch, came from the far-off 



202 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

pine-woods ; nearer at hand, in the green fields, 
the corn-craik uttered its harsh cry ; while the 
roar of the numerous waterfalls of the Mesna, a 
powerful stream that flows through the village down 
into the lake, sounded very loud in the universal 
Sabbath stillness. After dinner I walked up the 
heights into the shadows of the pine-woods. I sat 
down with my Bible in a very peaceful and beau- 
tiful sanctuary of nature. Before me, a fine cascade 
gleamed white through the trees, and filled the 
wood with its psalm of praise. Around me, the 
red trunks of the pines stretched away into endless 
vistas of green loneliness and odorous gloom. The 
ground everywhere was carpeted with rich and 
rare mosses — cushions of that loveliest species, the 
ostrich-plume feather moss, and tufts of the Lyco- 
podium annotimim. There was one splendid lichen 
peculiar to Norway and the Arctic regions, called 
Nephroma arctica, which I saw in this wood for 
the first time. It formed an immense rosette, 
upwards of a foot in diameter, of primrose-yellow 
lobes, their under side tipped like finger-nails with 
the rich chocolate-coloured fructification. It was 
really a most beautiful plant, spreading over the 
ground everywhere, and would have been more in 
keeping with the luxuriance of a tropical forest 
than with the monotony of a Norwegian pine- 
wood. The mossy carpet was starred with fragile 
wood-sorrels and white coral-like bilberry blossoms. 
I read the first chapter of Revelation, and mused 
upon it, until I too had a revelation of Jesus Christ 



iv.] DEPARTURE. 203 

ill my Patmos ; saw the hairs of His head in the 
white flowers around me, and His eyes and feet 
in the flaming sunset that burned through the 
trees ; and heard His voice in the cataract, like 
the sound of many waters, and felt, like " Aurora 
Leigh"— 

" No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee, 
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars ; 
No pebble at your feet, but proves a sphere ; 
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim. 
.... Earth 's crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God ; 
But* only he who sees takes off his shoes." 

We started from Lillehammer early on Monday 
morning, intending to go through the valley of 
Gudbrandsdal, to Molde, a distance of nearly 200 
miles, in a north-westerly direction. Fortunately 
there was at the village a four-wheeled English car- 
riage, that had brought a party from Molde to the 
Miosen Lake, and now waited to be brought back to 
its owner. We got the carriage free on the condition 
of paying for the horses ; and this arrangement 
materially lessened the expense of the journey, as 
well as added greatly to the comfort of the ladies 
of the party. We formed a somewhat imposing 
procession as we passed through the village, and 
attracted a considerable share of attention from 
the inhabitants. The vehicle which contained my 
friend and myself was what is called a stolkjerre^ 
or double carriole. It was simply a square un- 
painted box, mounted on two wheels, without 



204 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

springs, and furnished with long shafts and a hard 
board laid across for a seat. It held us both 
tightly jammed ; free to turn our heads round, but 
not our bodies. The animal did not reflect much 
credit upon his species, and his accoutrements 
consisted of a most complicated and ragged 
system of grey cord and old leather. Altogether 
it was a sorry turn-out, and it would require a 
considerable amount of moral courage to drive 
through London in it. But the villagers thought 
it rather grand than otherwise ; at least the boys did 
not run after us, and a few peasants actually doffed 
their caps. On we sped, seeing the rich hilly scenery 
in glimpses through the dust of our chariot 
wheels, with frequent and loud exclamations of 
"Oh!" as the machine made a rougher jolt than 
usual. After about an hour and a half's drive, 
the carriage suddenly disappeared up a by-road. ' 
But we, absorbed in conversation, or in looking 
at the scenery, had not noticed this movement ; 
and thinking the carriage was ahead, though out 
of sight, drove confidently onwards at full speed. 
We were alarmed when we had gone a few hundred 
yards by hearing shouts in very energetic Nor- 
wegian — meaning probably "Stop thief!" — and 
seeing half-a-dozen fellows bounding rapidly to- 
wards us through the brushwood above the road. 
One of them came forward, and, mounting on our 
vehicle, without a word of explanation seized hold 
of our reins, and drove us back prisoners up a 
side-path till we came to a cluster of wooden 



IV.] MODE OF TRAVELLING. 205 

houses, where we halted. It seems that we had 
arrived at the first of the series of stations placed 
for the convenience of travellers at distances of 
about one Norwegian, or seven English miles, 
through the whole length of the Gudbrandsdal 
valley. The horse and machine we had brought 
with us from Lillehammer must here be changed 
for a fresh horse and machine, and the boy who 
had accompanied the horses of the carriage had to 
take them back along with our equipage. Hence 
the alarm of the natives at our ignorant escapade. 
They thought that we were going to run off with 
our magnificent dog-cart, and sell the whole affair 
for a large" sum at Molde. Of course, had they 
known that we were clergymen, they would not 
have insulted us and excited themselves by che- 
rishing such fears ; but there was nothing in our 
appearance to indicate our profession, and I sup- 
pose our faces, apart from our professional habili- 
ments, were not accepted as conclusive evidence of 
our honesty. 

I must here pause a little to give an idea of the 
mode of travelling in Norway, as this is a con- 
venient halting-place for the purpose. There are 
no stage coaches or diligences, for the people very 
seldom travel, and then only on pressing business. 
The most common and characteristic vehicle of 
the country is called a carriole, shaped somewhat 
like an old-fashioned gig. It has no springs, but 
the shafts are very long and slender, and the 
wheels very large, so that its motion is far from 



206 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

being uncomfortable. It carries only one person, 
who has to drive with his feet nearly on a level 
with his nose, and a boy sitting behind on the 
portmanteau, amalgamating its contents, whose 
duty it is for an exceedingly small drikkepenge 
or gratuity to take back the horse and machine. 
Owing to this arrangement, a large party must go 
in .a long file of carriages like a funeral proces- 
sion. The Norwegian horses are all small, cream- 
coloured, and remarkably docile and sure-footed, 
so that the most timid lady or the youngest child 
might safely drive them down the steepest gradients 
at full speed. The roads are made by Government : 
but each proprietor along the highway has to keep 
a certain portion of it in good working order, this 
portion being regulated according to the size and 
value of the property through which it passes. 
Painted wooden poles are placed at certain in- 
tervals along the road, inscribed with the name of 
the person who has to keep that part of it in order, 
and the number of yards or alen entrusted to his 
supervision. You can, therefore, form a pretty 
good idea of the wealth or poverty of any neigh- 
bourhood through which you travel by the greater 
or less distances of road thus distributed to the 
owners of land. At regular intervals of seven or 
eight English miles — as already observed — there 
are placed station-houses, where fresh horses 
and conveyances may be had, as well as lodging 
and entertainment for man and beast. These 
stations are either fast or slow stations. At 



iv.] THE ROAD-BOOK. 207 

the fast stations a number of horses and carrioles 
are kept regularly, ready for the convenience of 
travellers ; so that you ought not to be detained on 
your journey more than half an hour. A printed 
Government-book is kept at each of these stations, 
where the traveller writes down his name, the 
number of horses and carriages he requires, the 
place he has come from, and his destination, as 
well as any complaint he may have to make on 
the score of carelessness or detention. Such com- 
plaints are inquired into regularly by a Govern- 
ment inspector, and redressed as far as possible. 
Some of the remarks made in the column of 
complaints ■ by Englishmen are very amusing. 
There was one English name which we found in 
the road-book of every station, coupled with some 
depreciating remark upon the scenery, the manners 
of the people, the nature and price of food, &c. &c. 
Nothing seemed to please his jaundiced eye and 
bilious stomach. Doing the journey post-haste, a 
detention of ten minutes in changing his horse and 
carriage at a new station was a most exaggerated 
offence. Desirous of making a profit of his tour, 
by spending less for travelling and keep together 
than his ordinary personal expenses would have 
cost at home, the charge of fivepence for a cup of 
coffee with solid accompaniments was considered 
most exorbitant. Here the people were exces- 
sively disobliging, and he was half-starved upon 
strong-smelling gamle ost (old cheese), parchment- 
like fladbrod^ of which nearly an acre is required 



208 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

to satisfy an ordinary appetite, and butter that 
looked like railway grease ; there the eggs were all 
rotten, there were no toothpicks, and the landlord 
was an extortionate Jew. With a slight variation 
upon the same lively tune he went from place to 
place. Fortunately, as English was -not the lan- 
guage of the country, his Parthian shafts did not 
wound so severely as he intended. On the con- 
trary, it was amusing to see the conscious pride 
with which his ill-natured remarks were pointed 
out to us by more than one innkeeper, who 
imagined in the innocence of his heart that they 
could not be anything else than highly laudatory. 
We were glad to see that others of our country- 
men, following in the wake of Mr. Smith, had 
reversed his decision, and by their genial and 
hearty commendation of many things that were 
really excellent saved Englishmen from the impu- 
tation — which they too often justify abroad — of 
being a nation of grumblers. And while I am on 
this subject I may as well mention that very great 
harm is done to the peasantry by the thoughtless 
and indiscriminate lavishness on the one hand, and 
the excessive meanness and stinginess on the other, 
of our countrymen. The simple-hearted people 
cannot understand the inconsistency ; and Norway 
promises, if the same demoralizing system con- 
tinues to be pursued as at present, to be a second 
edition of Switzerland and the Rhine — a result 
which every one who knows and can appreciate 
the primitive straightforwardness, the genuine 



IV.] PROVISIONS AT STATIONS. 209 

kindness and honest independence of the Nor- 
wegians, must deplore. 

At the slow stations the peasants of the neigh- 
bourhood are obliged by turns to supply the 
traveller with a horse and conveyance ; and, un- 
less he sends %.forbud or messenger before him to 
apprise the people of the exact time of his coming, 
he may have to wait several hours while the horse 
is being caught on the hills. Of course, should the 
traveller disappoint the station-keeper, either by 
delay or by failing to appear altogether, compen- 
sation must be given. We had no experience of 
these slow stations, for all the stations on the route 
we took were fast, so that we got on very swiftly 
and pleasantly. We met no English travellers 
all the time ; and our claims for horses and con- 
veyances were never brought into competition with 
those of others. Some of the stations are poorly 
furnished, and very scantily supplied with pro- 
visions. You may riot in Goshen-like plenty to- 
day, and to-morrow be reduced to jladbrod and 
porridge. The traveller who passes in the morn- 
ing may fare sumptuously upon reindeer-vension, 
ptarmigan, and salmon ; while he who comes late 
in the day may have to content himself with polish- 
ing the bones and gathering up the fragments which 
his more fortunate predecessor has left. In some 
quarters the innkeepers shift so frequently that no 
dependence for two successive years can be placed 
upon the guide-book's certificate of character ; and 
we ourselves found the best entertainment, the 

P 



210 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap 



greatest attention, and the most moderate charges, 
in places marked dangerous on account of the very 
opposite qualities. Many of the stations are filthy, 
and uninhabitable by any one more refined than 
a Laplander, swarming with F sharps and B flats. 
Indeed, the king of the fleas keeps his court — not 
at Tiberias, as travellers say — but at a Norwegian 
station-house of the worst class. We, however, 
were either more fortunate than the great bulk of 
tourists, or our bodies were unusually pachyder- 
matous, for in no case were we tormented during 
the night watches, and generally the larder was 
well supplied with salmon, trout, beefsteaks, and 
eggs. The price of accommodation was ridicu- 
lously low — at least when compared with the bill of 
a Highland hotel. We had a magnificent supper, 
a capital bed, and a breakfast consisting of more 
than six dishes of a very solid character, at the first 
station we halted at, and the cost of the whole was 
only is. io^d. for each. The price of accommoda- 
tion, as well as the charge for horses and con- 
veyances, is fixed by Government tariff, but the 
innkeepers invariably ask more from Englishmen, 
as they imagine that every native of these islands 
who travels in their country must be an embryo 
Rothschild. The usual rate of keep per day is a 
specie-dollar, — that is, 4s. 6d. of our money ; and 
the day's travelling expenses, along with keep, 
unless you go enormous distances at a stretch, 
should very rarely exceed an average of 10s. The 
station-house keepers are a very respectable class 






IV.] CURIOSITY OF NA TIVES. 211 

of men, usually. They are often landed proprietors 
or justices of the peace, and only set themselves 
out for the entertainment and transport of travellers 
because they are obliged to do so by Government. 
Indeed, this innkeeping and posting business is a 
tax, and they pay it as we pay income-tax, with 
something like a grudge. They must, therefore, 
be treated with civility, and in some instances 
with very considerable respect. A Norwegian inn- 
keeper, if ordered about like a Highland Sandie 
M'Tonald, would considerably astonish the traveller 
guilty of such boldness. 

But to return from this digression, necessary 
to explain our mode of travel, to the route itself. 
The road through the Gudbrandsdal is the regular 
postal route from Christiania to Throndhjem, and is 
therefore the most frequented and the best known 
part of the country. And yet the people are almost 
as unsophisticated as in the remotest districts. 
They crowded around us at the different stations, 
questioned us on all sorts of subjects, and carefully 
examined our dress and luggage. The ladies of 
our party were especial ^objects of curiosity to the 
women. Their ornaments and watches were ten- 
derly touched, and greatly admired. Hands were 
lifted up in amazement at the strange wonders 
which glimpses of foreign boots and petticoats dis- 
closed. An air-cushion inflated for their benefit, 
and placed on the carriage seat, and then sat upon 
by an adventurous Dutch-built dame, elicited shouts 
of merriment. A few presents of pins, buttons, and 

P 2 



212 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Birmingham trinkets made them insist on shaking 
hands with us all round, a proof of friendship 
which, owing to the general prevalence of that 
touch of nature which makes Norway and Scot- 
land kin, the ladies were somewhat shy of accept- 
ing. The flaxen-haired cherubs had, a revelation 
of a higher world than the common world of 

fladbrod and porridge — a foretaste of Valhalla itself 

« 

— in the unknown delights of English comfits and 
lollipops ; though I am not sure that it was really 
kind in us thus to awaken capacities and educate 
senses which, after a momentary fruition of bliss, 
must thenceforward be craving for the unattain- 
able. 

After passing several stations, and accomplishing 
nearly fifty miles, we arrived late in the evening at 
Listad, near the picturesque and ancient church of 
Ringebo, where we stayed all night. About half a 
mile distant from the station-house, a wild gorge 
between micaceous cliffs is formed by the Vaalen 
Elv, a large torrent that flows from the mountains 
on the left into the Lougen. Here, on the w^hite 
vellum-like bark of the birch-trees, I gathered, for 
the first time in Norway, great quantities of that 
most lovely lichen, the Cetraria juniperina, in full 
fructification. The thallus is richly frilled, and of 
a most vivid yellow colour, contrasting beautifully 
with the broad shields of deep chocolate brown 
borne on the extremities of the lobes. Expanded 
by the recent rain, this lichen covered with its 
shaggy tufts all the trunks and branches of the 



IV.] SCENERY OF GUDBRANDSDAL. 213 

trees, and imparted to the wood a very singular 
appearance. The mossy ground was also tesselated 
by large patches of the Cetraria nivalis^ a snowy 
scolloped lichen growing in erect rigid tufts, which 
in this country is only found on the extreme 
summits of the Cairngorm mountains. The Gud- 
brandsdal valley is remarkable for its length, being 
1 68 English miles long; and the greater part of it 
is richly cultivated, with pine-clad hills rising on 
either side, but almost never picturesque in outline, 
or assuming an Alpine character. It is in fact 
a mere trough across one of the most massive and 
featureless mountain chains in Norway, bounded 
on both sides by comparatively uniform and level 
background. The great peaks retire behind the 
sky-line so as to be completely invisible ; there are 
no distant prospects, none of those charming lateral 
vistas caused by interlacing mountains, which re- 
veal enough only to stimulate the imagination, and 
solicit it onward to grander scenes beyond. Even 
in the wildest and most romantic parts of the route, 
which are considered to be the entrance of the 
valley between Lillehammer and Moshuus, and the 
Pass of Rusten, between Laurgaard and Braend- 
haugen, the view is either exhausted altogether, or, 
as in passing up Loch Katrine to the west, the eye 
sees out through the romantic to the tame and flat 
beyond ; thus greatly impairing the impression 
which such a spot ought to produce. There are 
many landscapes in the Highlands quite equal, if 
not superior, to those of the Gudbrandsdal valley. 



214 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Owing to the peculiar conformation of the moun- 
tains, the really splendid scenery of Norway is 
confined to the fjords of the west coast. 

We were greatly charmed with the river Lougen, 
which, always very broad and deep, expands here 
and there into chains of lakes — some of which, like 
the Lake of Losna, are navigable for large vessels. 
Indeed, for upwards of tw r enty miles, between 
Moshuus and Listad, the journey used to be ac- 
complished by a steamer, which has now been 
withdrawn. Some very fine cataracts occur in the 
course of the river ; and the roar of the immense 
body of water, broken up into snow-white masses 
contrasting beautifully with its uniformly rich green 
colour elsewhere, combined with the picturesque- 
ness of its lofty banks adorned with hanging woods 
of pine and birch, produce a profound impression. 
At the Pass of Rusten especially the river is truly 
sublime, forcing its way through a narrow gateway 
in the mountains, which approach each other so 
closely that the road has been cut out of the living 
rock. It is a fearful place, of which the Pass of 
Killiecrankie can give one no idea ; and we drove 
shudderingly through it on the brink of precipices 
overhanging the deep foaming linns of the river. 
On the gneissic rocks through which the road was 
cut I observed an immense quantity of a very rare 
lichen called Gyrophora murina, which is included 
in the list of British lichens on the authority of 
specimens found on St. Vincent's Rock by a Mr. 
Dare, but which has not since been seen there, or 



IV.] LICHENS IN PASS OF R US TEN. 215 

» 
indeed anywhere else in this country. It consists 
of a single roundish, crumpled, concave leaf, from 
an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, attached 
by a central disk to its growing-place. Its upper 
side is of a dark ash colour, passing into dark 
brown on the edges ; the under side being of a 
deep black, covered with minute shagreen-like 
roughness, interspersed with scattered fibres. The 
rocks in this locality were completely blackened 
with it ; and were thus harmonized with the pro- 
found gloom of the spot. Norway is the head- 
quarters of this tribe of lichens ; which are also 
common on our highest Highland mountains. On 
the bare arid rocks behind Christiansand occurs 
that • most singular member of the family, the 
Umbilicaria pustulata, like large ragged patches of 
dark brown parchment, covered with warts or pus- 
tular elevations of the whole surface of the thallus. 
Below the fortress of Bergenhuus, that guards the 
harbour of Bergen, I noticed it growing in immense 
profusion, giving a very shaggy look to the rocks. 
Common on the granite of Devonshire, and espe- 
cially on Dartmoor, in Scotland I have only seen 
it on the smooth glacier-planed rocks of hyper- 
sthene that rise around Loch Corruisk in the Island 
of Skye. On the dark shores of that weird Stygian 
lake, lying at the base of an awful amphitheatre of 
leafless peaks that look as if made of cast-iron — 
this strange lichen grows to a monstrous size, and 
with its charred and blistered masses harmonizes 
thoroughly with the character of a scene unex- 



216 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [CHAP? 

ampled in Europe for wild sterility and grandeur. 
Beside it, growing in dense silken tufts on the 
footpath that winds along the western shore of 
the lake, I gathered on the same occasion that 
rare moss the Leucodon Hebridamm, one of the 
loveliest of the British mosses, and unlike all others 
in appearance, reminding one of New Zealand 
species. But to resume, on the route through the 
Gildbrandsdal we saw no villages cosily grouped 
round a church, whose spire is conspicuous from 
afar. The churches are lonely buildings, few and 
far between, and the names crowded so thickly on 
Munch's admirable map indicate mere farmhouses 
with their steadings, called a gaard, equivalent to 
the Scottish toun. This isolation and dispersion 
of the houses over a wide area is a singular feature 
in Norwegian landscapes, and arises from the fact 
that almost every head of a family is the proprietor 
of the land on which he dwells. It gives, as Pro- 
fessor Forbes has remarked, a dreary interminable 
aspect to a journey, like that of a book unrelieved 
by subdivision into chapters, where we are at least 
invited to halt, though at liberty to proceed. 

Next day, before coming to the gorge of Rusten, 
we passed the cleft of Kringelen, where Colonel 
Sinclair, nephew of the Earl of Caithness, and his 
regiment of Scotch mercenaries, were massacred 
by an ambush of the peasants in 1612. Sinclair 
offered his services to Gustavus Adolphus, King of 
Sweden, who was then at war with Norway and 
Denmark. Landing from Scotland at Molde. he 



IV.] MASSACRE OF KRINGELEN. 217 

marched through Romsdal, intending to cross the 
uplands of Norway to the frontiers of Sweden, 
laying waste the country as he passed with fire 
and sword, and committing many acts of remorse- 
less cruelty. Exasperated to the utmost fury, and 
unable to contend with Sinclair in open fight, 
a band of 500 peasants adopted the same expe- 
dient as that recorded in the Tyrolese war of inde- 
pendence. Having collected an enormous quantity 
of rocks and stones on the brow of the hill imme- 
diately above the pathway leading through the 
narrow defile of Kringelen, they awaited the signal 
of a young man who had undertaken to guide 
Sinclair to this spot. No sooner were the devoted 
troops fairly underneath, and the signal given, than 
the fatal avalanche descended, burying them under 
the huge pile, so that only a few escaped. An 
affecting incident in connexion with this tragic 
event is commonly told to the traveller. A Nor- 
wegian lady in the neighbourhood, hearing that 
Mrs. Sinclair was with her husband, sent her own 
lover, to whom she was to be married next day, to 
protect her from insult ; but Mrs. Sinclair, mis- 
taking his intentions, drew a pistol from her bosom, 
and shot him dead on the spot. It is said that 
Mrs. Sinclair, a young and beautiful woman, was 
most devotedly attached to her husband, w r hom 
she followed across the sea disguised in male attire, 
and did not reveal herself until the arrival of the 
troops in Norway, when she could not be sent 
home. The dalesmen are never tired of reciting 



218 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the praises of their valorous countrymen on this 
occasion. An inscription on a pillar by the road- 
side marks the scene of the massacre, and tells 
how "the peasants, among whom dwell honour, 
virtue, and all that earns praise, brake the Scotch 
to pieces like a potter's vessel." In the peasants' 
huts, matchlocks, broadswords, powder-flasks, and 
other relics of the regiment are shown to tourists 
with much patriotic enthusiasm. There is a Nor- 
wegian ballad entitled " Herr Sinclair's Vise af 
Storm," sung by almost every native, of the end 
of which the following is a free translation : — 

" Strike home, ye valiant Northmen all ! 
Was the dalesmen's answering cry ; 
And fast the Scottish warriors fall, 
And in their gore they lie. 

The raven flapped his jet black wing 

As he mangled the face of the slain ; 
And Scottish maids a dirge may sing 

For the lovers they'll ne'er see again. 

No one of the fourteen hundred men 

E'er returned to his home to tell 
What peril awaits the foe in each glen 

Where the stalwart Northmen dwell. 

A pillar stands where our foemen lie, 

In deadly fight o'erthrown ; 
And foul fall the Northman whose heart beats not high 

When he looks on that old grey stone." 

The natives, as in this ballad, try to prove that 
the slaughter of the Scotch was not a treacherous 
massacre, but the result cf a brave hand-to-hand 



IV.] HEIGHTS OF LESSOE. 219 

encounter. And they will not believe that Scotch- 
men care very little for the fate of Sinclair and his 
mercenaries, of whom not one in a thousand has 
ever heard. We certainly did not blush for our 
country when we surveyed the wild scene. 

After passing through the dark gorge of Rusten- 
berg the road gradually ascends, until at last an 
elevation of 1800 feet above the level of the sea 
has been attained. The scenery in consequence 
becomes bleaker and less wooded ; the spruce and 
pine gradually giving place to the birch, which 
here forms the principal tree — and, as usual, has 
a whiter and cleaner trunk and brighter foliage in 
proportion to the altitude 1 . The cultivation of 
corn and potatoes is merged in that of grass and 
hay ; and the fields, which look dry and parched, 



1 It is interesting to notice that in all probability the name of the 
birch comes from the Sanscrit word bhoorja, applied to the laminated 
bark of an Indian birch (Betula Bhojpatra) used for writing and 
ornamental purposes, like the paper-birch of North America. If 
this be so. it affords a striking proof of the theory that the ancestors 
of the present races of Europe migrated westwards from Central 
Asia. The bestowal of the name of an Indian birch upon a similar 
tree peculiar to the northern latitudes of Europe is as curious in its 
way as the bestowal of Saracen names, such as Mischebel, Al-al- 
'Ain, derived from the natural objects of the Arabian desert, upon 
the mountains and glaciers of Switzerland during the Moorish 
invasion. On Mount Etna the beech, the birch, and the Scotch fir, 
occupy the same zone ; on the Pyrenees the Scotch fir ascends higher 
than the beech ; on the Alps the birch fails before the Scotch fir ; 
but in Norway, Sweden, and Russia, the birch extends far above 
the Scotch fir, and is the last tree that disappears in altitude and 
latitude. 



220 HO LID A YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

are irrigated by means of wooden troughs, in which 
water is led down, often for long distances, from 
the mountains. The air feels keener and more 
bracing ; patches of snow appear in the shady 
hollows far down the mountain sides on our left ; 
and the landscape assumes a wilder* and more 
Alpine character. At Braendhaugen the road is 
very sandy ; this part of the valley, called Lessoe, 
which is purely pastoral, having evidently been 
once the bottom of an extensive glacier lake. 
Great banks of clay, scantily covered with grass, 
and presenting a peculiarly bleak grey appearance, 
rise up on the right-hand side of the river. This 
feature continues uninterruptedly to Dombaas, and 
the soil is so loose and sandy that the steep sides 
of the road are covered with withered patches of 
artificial turf fastened by wooden nails to prevent 
them slipping. It is very disagreeable travelling 
along this part of the route in dry weather, owing 
to the clouds of dust raised by the vehicles. Fol- 
lowing immediately behind the carriage — for our 
spirited horse could not be kept back — we were 
nearly suffocated. Our clothes were as white as 
a miller's, and the scenery appeared to us all the 
harsher on account of the scanty glimpses we ob- 
tained of it, and the irritation of the gritty particles 
in our eyes. At Braendhaugen the good old lady 
who keeps the station showed us the silver cup 
presented to her by the Queen of Norway and 
Sweden ; but my recollection of this stage hangs 
chiefly upon a pair of magnificent reindeer antlers 



IV.] TOFTEMOEN. 221 

nailed above the *door, indicating that reindeer 
venison is occasionally found here. 

We were very tired after the long days journey ; 
the heat and dust had been very oppressive ; and, 
for my own part, the jolting on a cushionless seat 
had made me so sore and tender that I could 
scarcely walk or sit. At eight o'clock at night we 
arrived at the mountain station of Toftemoen. 
Here we expected to stay all night ; but a party 
from Throndhjem had sent on a forbud and se- 
cured all the available accommodation, and we had 
therefore to go on to the next station, where we 
could get quarters. We w r ere glad, however, to 
rest a little and get some refreshment at Tofte- 
moen. This is a very ancient place, and famous 
in the sagas. It is one of the mountain stations 
which have the privilege of immunity from taxes, 
and appears to be one of the most comfortable 
resting-places in Norway. The proprietor is Mr. 
Tofte, well known throughout the whole country. 
He is the lineal descendant of Harold Haarfager, 
the first King of all Norway, and, in consequence, 
of Odin, the mythological Hercules of the North. 
The family are exceedingly proud of their birth, 
and take precedence of all the other proprietors 
at church and market. They have never been 
known for many generations to marry out of their 
own family — the result being that the present 
owner of the name is a simpleton, and his eldest 
son nearly a dw r arf. This descendant of kings 
and representative of the oldest family in Europe 






222 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

unharnessed our horses for us like any common 
stable-boy. I treated him with considerable defer- 
ence — though whether he was more impressed by 
my manner or my attempts at Norwegian I cannot 
say. But, in return, he showed me the principal 
rooms in his house, which contain many curious 
old cabinets, and a broad slate table on which the 
late King of Norway and Sweden dined on his 
way to be crowned at Throndhjem. I saw the 
king's autograph, which he had scratched with a 
knife at one corner of the table. Tofte told me, 
with an air of considerable self-importance, of the 
dignified reception which he had given to the king ; 
and related that, when the king wished to bring 
out his silver for dinner, he replied that he had as 
much silver in his house as would suffice to dine a 
much larger party than the king's. This was no 
idle boast, for I never saw in a private person's 
dwelling such a vast quantity of massive silver 
articles, evidently heirlooms, dating, some of them, 
many centuries back. Besides being possessed of 
the bluest of blue blood, Tofte is a wealthy landed 
proprietor, a member of the Storthing or House 
of Commons, and a justice of the peace. This did 
not prevent him, however, from charging us a 
higher price than we had paid anywhere else for 
the entertainment we had at his house. He pre- 
sented me with his photograph taken at Christiania, 
dressed very stiffly and uncomfortably in Sunday 
clothes. The face is intensely Scotch, with a pecu- 
liar look of combined simplicity and shrewdness. 



IV.] TWILIGHT AT BOMB A AS. 223 

The rest of our journey that night was not very 
pleasant, and it was past eleven o'clock when we 
arrived at the telegraphic station of Dombaas. All 
was quiet and still ; the people apparently having 
gone to bed, and sunk into the first deep sleep. 
Though so late at night, there was no darkness. 
You could read the smallest print with the utmost 
distinctness ; and but for the stillness of nature, 
and an indefinable feeling of mellowness and ten- 
derness in the air, you might imagine it to be 
noon instead of midnight. The long bright Nor- 
wegian twilight is inexpressibly beautiful. The 
earth sleeps, but her heart waketh ; the golden 
tints of the .departing day still linger on the dis- 
tant hills ; and a light, soft and sweet as the smile 
of an infant in its first slumber, fills all the sky, 
and you would think that the dawn had returned, 
only that the glory is in the west instead of in the 
east. Nothing reminds you of darkness and sleep 
but the rich liquid lustre of Venus hanging near 
the pale blue horizon, like a silver lamp let down 
out of heaven by an unseen hand, and flecking a 
little shadowy pathway of light upon every ex- 
posed sheet of water. The long daylight is very 
favourable to the growth of vegetation, plants 
growing in the night as well as in the day in the 
short but' ardent summer. But the stimulus of 
perpetual solar light is peculiarly trying to the 
nervous system of those who are not accustomed 
to it. It prevents proper repose, and banishes 
sleep. I never felt before how needful darkness 



224 HQLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 



is for the welfare of our bodies and minds. I 
longed for night ; but the farther north we went, 
the farther we were fleeing from it, until at last, 
when we reached the most northern point of our 
tour, the sun set for only one hour and a half. 
Consequently, the heat of the day -never cooled 
down, and accumulated until it became almost 
unendurable at last. Truly for a most wise and 
beneficent purpose did God make light and create 
darkness. " Light is sweet, and it is a pleasant 
thing to the eyes to behold the sun." But dark- 
ness is also sweet ; it is the nurse of nature's kind 
restorer, balmy sleep ; and without the tender 
drawing round us of its curtains, the weary eyelid 
will not close, and the jaded nerves will not be 
soothed to refreshing rest. Not till the everlasting 
day break, and the shadows flee away, and the 
Lord Himself shall be our light, and our God our 
glory, can w r e do without the cloud in the sunshine, 
the shade of sorrow in the bright light of joy, and 
the curtain of night for the deepening of the sleep 
which God gives His beloved. 

We had considerable difficulty in arousing the 
people from their slumbers, but at last we suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the services of a blithesome 
lass, who speedily extemporised beds for us, and 
made us as comfortable as possible on such short 
notice. The beds in Norway, I may mention, are 
all procrustean ; a kind of domestic guillotine 
invented for the purpose of amputating the super- 
fluous length of Englishmen's legs. The Nor- 



iv.] ALPINE CLIMATE. 225 

wegians are a tall race, but I suppose they lie 
doubled up in bed like the letter V, the os coccygis 
touching the footboard, and the feet and head 
keeping loving company on the same pillow. 
Though not above the average height, my own 
unfortunate limbs were hanging exposed over the 
footboard ; the down quilt lay in all its rotundity 
in my arms like a nightmare of some monster 
baby; and, while sleeping uneasily in this awk- 
ward posture, I dreamt that I had been meta- 
morphosed somehow into a waterfall, and was 
flowing in white masses of foam, and with a 
considerable murmur, over very hard and slippery 
rocks. Next . morning we felt the air a good deal 
colder, for we were now at an elevation of upwards 
of 2000 feet above the level of the sea. The scenery 
of the place was bare treeless upland, very spar- 
ingly cultivated. The road to Throndhjem passed 
in a series of ups and downs over monotonous 
brown hills to our right ; while the highway to 
Molde lay far down in an equally featureless valley 
to our left. A few hillocks here and there broke 
the level surface, covered with grey boulders, and 
clothed, instead of heather, which is somewhat rare 
in Norway, with crowberry and arbutus bushes. 
The lovely large blue-bells of the Menziesia peeped 
up everywhere among the familiar moorland vege- 
tation ; the Andromeda displayed its rich crimson 
blossoms on every dry knoll ; while the clayey 
banks were brightened and beautified exceedingly 
with multitudes of the fairy Scottish primrose, 

Q 



226 HO LI DA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

whose sulphury leaves and tiny purple flowers are 
the ornament of the Caithness cliffs, but proceed 
no farther south in this country. There was an air 
of inexpressible loneliness about the place ; the 
stillness being broken only by the feeble bleat of a' 
few sheep and goats — as diminutivp, though full- 
grown, as lambs and kids — and the tinkle of the 
bells suspended round the necks of the no less 
Lilliputian cattle. A few pigs ran about, as thin 
as greyhounds ; and the Alpine vegetation, as well 
as the small size of animal life, testified to the 
ungenial character of the climate. The coolness 
of the air was very pleasant to us, roasted as we 
had been so long in the confined valley ; but it 
must be a very trying thing to live at this elevated 
station in winter. Storms must blow over its 
shelterless fields with unexampled fury, and the 
snow drift in huge masses around it. The short 
black December day will be like the frown of Odin, 
and every wild night lit up by the magical radiance 
of the Aurora Borealis will be a Walpurgis-Nacht. 
Woe to the traveller who is then obliged to cross 
the Dovrefjeld ! 

After leaving Dombaas, the scenery became 
exceedingly tame and uninteresting. Huge fea- 
tureless mountains of gneiss, scantily clothed with 
brown moorish vegetation, enclosed a dreary valley 
covered with straggling pines. The road at first 
passed over a desolate height among stunted firs 
and junipers — where immense cairns of stones 
blackened with tripe-de-roche lichens and Alpine 



IV 



r.] POVERTY-STRICKEN DISTRICT. 227 



mosses everywhere encumbered the ground. The 
pastures here were very bare and stony. Large 
tufts of the aconite or monkshood, peculiar to 
Alpine pastures, spread over them as thickly as the 
yellow rag-weed spreads over a fallow field in 
England. The sheep and cows were miserably 
thin and ill-fed. It was a poverty-stricken region, 
sadly contrasting with the rich Gudbrandsdal and 
the fertile Romsdal, between which it lay. Most 
of the houses were rude hovels of the most primi- 
tive construction. We noticed that a considerable 
number of the birches by the roadside had a broad 
ring of black round their white stems. The bark 
had been stripped off to cover the roofs of the 
houses ; shingles or turf being laid above. This 
birch bark has a very pleasant smell, and is besides 
very durable and quite impervious to moisture. 
The walls were made of squared trunks of trees, in- 
geniously dovetailed at the corners, with layers of 
sphagnum or bog moss inserted between each log, in 
order to keep out the cold. From these squalid 
abodes crowds of bareheaded, barefooted children 
in fluttering picturesque rags rushed out as we 
passed by, clamorous for alms, following us for 
long distances with their importunities. As the 
road in this locality was crossed at frequent in- 
tervals by gates, separating the numerous small 
farms from each other, this circumstance was taken 
advantage of in earning an honest penny. No 
sooner did our carrioles appear in sight than a boy 
would rush out from a house, with three pieces of 

Q3 



228 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

rag floating behind him, and run with headlong 
speed along the road to open the nearest gate for 
us. Frequently, however, his hopes of a skilling or 
two were disappointed by the forethought of a 
longer-headed comrade, who had stationed himself 
at the gate in readiness to open it at once to the 
expected travellers. In such cases, we always re- 
warded the honest labour of the legs, and not the 
slothful cunning of the brain. The Lougen at this 
part of the route passes through several lakes, the 
largest called Lesje Vand, and the smallest Lesje 
Vaerks Vand, which is 2078 feet above the level 
of the sea. Here a rare and curious phenomenon 
in physical geography may be seen. The river 
Lougen, whose course we had been following for 
upwards of 200 miles from Lillehammer, issues from 
the last-mentioned lake on the south-east, and 
flows through the Miosen Lake to the Christiania 
Fjord ; while the Rauma issues from the other 
extremity and, flowing to the north-west through 
the valley of Romsdal, falls into the Mol.de Fjord. 
The whole of Southern Norway is thus surrounded 
by water, and converted into an island. 

Passing Holager, we arrived very early in the 
day at Holseth, a very clean and comfortable 
station. As we had resolved to remain here over 
the night, I embraced the opportunity of ascending 
one of the Dovrefjeld mountains, upwards of 4000 
feet high, immediately in front of the inn. The 
first part of the ascent was exceedingly arduous, 
leading through a tangled maze of junipers and 



IV 



.] ASCENT OF DOVREFJELD. 229 



dwarf birches {Be tula nana), creeping over loose 
fragments of rocks, and forming the underwood of 
a splendid forest of Scotch firs. I was delighted 
to find here the Pyrola tiniflora, perfuming the 
air with the delicious fragrance of its large erect 
snow-white blossom. In boggy places grew a re- 
markably beautiful and stately species of "rattle" 
{Pedicularis scepirum Carolt), called by the people 
Karl's skefter. It is upwards of three feet high, 
the upper half being a spike of golden flowers. 
Rearing its lofty head above the grass, it looks 
like a royal sceptre, and is a great ornament to 
the woods. It has an extensive range from Lap- 
land to Austria, Hungary, and East Prussia. In 
the same moist localities I also found the stately 
Angelica archangelica, whose pungent aromatic 
stems, called myrstut, are highly prized by the 
Norwegians for their stomachic properties, and 
eagerly gathered wherever they can find it. Above 
the forest region, the mountain, though very much 
steeper, was less encumbered with shrubs, and 
therefore more easily climbed. The most abrupt 
declivities of the Norwegian hills are invariably on 
the western side, the eastern side having a gradual 
inclination, w T hile the summits consist of broad flat 
table-lands. Owing to this feature, the various zones 
of vegetation do not rise above one another as in 
the Alps and other mountain chains, but rather lie 
side by side ; so that you may travel several days 
on slightly rising ground through the region of 
the firs ; for several days more through the zone of 



230 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the birch ; and for an equal length of time through 
the belt of the Alpine plants, before the snow- 
covered ridge is attained. The botany of Norway, 
therefore, over very wide spaces of mountainous 
territory, is somewhat monotonous, presenting none 
of those quick transitions which form the charm 
of Alpine exploration, and rendering botanizing a 
work of time and great fatigue. The season of my 
visit happened to be a late one — the previous winter 
having been unprecedentedly severe and protracted. 
The side of the hill was therefore covered with 
brown and matted grass, smoothly pressed by the 
snow that had very recently lain upon it; and 
on the top there were great snow-wreaths, over 
which I walked with considerable difficulty. Few 
of the Alpine plants had yet begun to flower ; but 
in many places exposed to the sun I observed 
enormous patches in full bloom of the Alpine 
Azalea. The foliage could not be seen for the 
multitude of rosy flowers. In this country we see 
it only in little tufts or fragments, which, however 
beautiful, give no idea of its exquisite loveliness 
when growing, as on the Norwegian mountains, in 
solid masses of colour almost acres in extent. Its 
beauty was greatly enhanced by a setting of rein- 
deer-lichen, which whitened the ground everywhere 
with its snow-white coral-like tufts. It is with 
lichens as with Alpine plants ; they increase in 
beauty and luxuriance the higher the altitude or 
latitude. Every one is familiar with the reindeer- 
moss of our own moorlands ; but the variety that 



IV.] BEAUTY AND VARIETY OF PLANTS. 231 

grows on the mountains of Norway and the plains 
of Lapland is far lovelier, forming dense and much- 
divided tufts of snowy purity and exquisite shape. 
The rosy flowers of the Azalea gleaming among 
these lichens looked like rubies or garnets set 
round with filigree work of frosted silver or carved 
ivory. 

Every dry stony knoll on the hill was covered 
with the compact cushion-like masses of the Green- 
land Saxifrage, with dense tufts of the Alpine 
Lychnis (which in this country, as already men- 
tioned, is only found in one locality), or with carpets 
of Moss Campion. Here and there, in marshy 
places, the rare Andromeda hypnoides formed bright 
green mossy tufts, from whence arose a profusion 
of slender hair-like crimson stalks, each bearing a 
single white bell-shaped blossom. Side by side 
with it grew the Pedicularis lapponica^ whose soft 
yellow blossoms formed a pleasing contrast ; and 
the globular snow-white heads of the rare cotton- 
grass {Eriophoram Scheuchzeri). Owing to the 
lateness of the season, the Anemone vemalis was 
still in flower on the sunny slopes, distinguished 
by its shaggy calyx clothed with brownish silky 
hairs, *and its large white blossoms tinged with 
purple. But it was among the cryptogamic plants 
that I gathered the richest harvest of species. 
The droppings of horses immediately above the 
fir-forest were covered with no less than four species 
of Splachnum — that rarest and loveliest genus of 
mosses, viz. S. rubrum, luteum, ampiriacenm, and 



232 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

vasculosum. The first two are peculiar to Norway 
and the Arctic circle ; and the last two are found 
on the highest Scottish hills, forming dense cushions 
of large transparent foliage around springs. It is 
the peculiarity of this singular tribe of Alpine 
mosses that they almost all grow on organic sub- 
stances, such as skulls of sheep and deer ; one 
species having been found on the decayed hat of 
traveller who had perished amid the snows of a 
St. Bernard. On the summit of the hill, the ground 
was covered everywhere with dense erect tufts of 
Cornicularia ochroleuca, and the snowy scolloped 
Cetraria nivalis — lichens which in this country are 
found very sparingly distributed only on the highest 
summits of the Cairngorm range. The stems of the 
former are sulphur-coloured, about half a foot long, 
repeatedly branched, the ultimate branches tinged 
with a dark greenish hue, as if a faint foreshadow- 
ing of grass. Nothing could exceed its luxuriance 
in this spot, forming carpets into which the foot 
sank up to the ankle. The rocks were whitened 
with the large granulated branchy excrescences of 
the Stereocaulon paschale, a lichen common on our 
own hills ; which is remarkable as being the first 
trace of vegetation that appears on naked lava, and 
is therefore very general on Vesuvius, Etna, and 
Ischia. On this Norwegian plateau we have the 
exact counterparts of the tundra or plains that 
border the Polar sea, covered almost exclusively 
with dense masses of the same cryptogamic vegeta- 
tion, and forming the pastures of innumerable herds 



iv.] REINDEER. 233 

of reindeer. As if to increase the resemblance, I 
found many of the lichen tufts and patches of 
Ranunculus glacialis growing beside the snow, 
cropped as if reindeer had been feeding there very 
recently ; and fortunately lifting up my eyes, I 
saw over the shoulder of the hill, about a quarter 
of a mile off, a herd of about sixty reindeer quietly 
grazing — one buck with large branching antlers 
standing as sentinel, and the light-coloured does 
and fawns collected in the centre of the group. It 
was a romantic sight, and would have delighted 
a sportsman's heart. In a little while they were 
apparently alarmed by something, and rushed 
away, till they were mere specks on the snow of 
the opposite hill. The reindeer are fast disap- 
pearing from the Southern mountains of Norway, 
where they used to be exceedingly numerous, and 
retreating to the northern parts ; and this is owing, 
not only to the disturbance of their haunts by an 
increasing number of sportsmen, but also to the 
gradual amelioration of the climate. It is rare 
now to see herds of any size farther south than the 
sixty-third degree. 

The Dovrefjeld Mountains are to Norway what 
the Bneadalbane Mountains are to Britain — the 
finest botanical field in the country. They have 
been successfully investigated by the late Professor 
Blytt and his son, the present accomplished curator 
of the Christiania botanical gardens, with whom I 
had a pleasant meeting on the Sogne Fjord ; but a 
very large portion remains still to be explored. 



234 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

The greatest variety of rare plants is found about 
Fogstuen, Jerkin, and Kongsvold. A great number 
of species peculiar to the Polar circle, and unknown 
elsewhere in Norway, may be gathered in these 
places. A large succulent species of moonwort 
(Botrychium virginicum) occurs on the- Dovrefjeld, 
which has a. very remarkable geographical range. 
In Europe it is found only in Norway ; but it 
abounds in many parts of the Southern United 
States, grows on the Andes of Mexico and on the 
Raklang Pass of the Himalayas, and is frequent 
on the mountains of Australia and New Zealand, 
where it is boiled and eaten by the natives. Like 
the Erigeron alpinus and Phleum alpinum, a species 
of Alpine grass — both growing on the Dovrefjeld, 
on the British mountains, at a great height on the 
Himalayas, and in the Straits of Magellan and 
the Falkland Islands — the distribution of this plant 
over such widely-separated areas is a very puzzling 
problem. 

I do not know whether I was the first who 
ascended this nameless mountain of the Dovrefjeld, 
but I gathered a cairn of loose stones which I 
piled above one another on the highest point, and 
writing my name, address, and date of visit on a 
card, enclosed it in the centre for the benefit of 
future explorers. The view from that elevated spot 
was truly grand : behind me Snsehattan — long 
considered the highest hill in Norway — towered 
up 7700 feet above a bleak desert plateau ; its 
upper half covered with snow, and forming an am- 



iv.l VIEW FROM SUMMIT OF HILL. 235 

phitheatre broken down on one side by great black 
precipices enclosing true glaciers. Over against 
me stretched the peaks, pinnacles, and horns of 
the Langfjeld ; while a lofty snow-cone rose stern 
and solitary on the distant horizon, which I iden- 
tified as Galdhoppigen, now ascertained to be the 
highest Norwegian mountain, being nearly icoo 
feet higher than Snaehattan. Westward I saw the 
fantastic summits of Romsdal, with the sphinx- 
like form of Storhattan, reposing amid the splen- 
dour of golden clouds, and facing the setting sun 
as if looking over the verge of the earth and 
peering into another and a brighter world. The 
colouring of the loftier mountains on the ho- 
rizon, unmodified by any such filtering of the 
reflected light through lenses of verdure as tones 
down and cools to a neutral tint the hues of our 
British mountains, was as positive and intense as 
that of the ruby, the amethyst, and the topaz. It 
was altogether a view peculiar to Norway, with 
an air of utter desolation and gloomy grandeur. 
Such vast masses of inorganic matter filled the 
horizon, that the presence of a little plant beside, 
my feet was cheering — reminding me of the organic 
chain of sympathy that bound us together. No 
creature appeared in sight, either on the earth or 
in the sky. No tinkling of cow-bells or shrill goat- 
song — sounds elsewhere common — broke the op- 
pressive lifelessness and loneliness of the place. For 
upwards of an hour I sat on my cairn drinking in 
the sublime influences of the scene ; but the waning 



236 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

light warned me that the day was far spent. In 
descending I had to traverse a long snow-field as 
smooth and hard as ice, and lying at a pretty steep 
angle on the hill-side. I had no sooner stepped upon 
it than my feet went from under me, and I glis- 
saded with great rapidity down the slope, striking 
very hard against some birch stumps that protruded 
out of the snow at the bottom. I was soaked to 
the skin, and a good deal stunned ; but I forgot 
every bodily discomfort in astonishment at the 
strange sight which my fall had disclosed. I had 
noticed before stepping on the snow that the sur- 
face was of a curious salmon colour in some places, 
and covered with fine particles like brick-dust ; and 
now I found that wherever my body had pressed 
the snow together there was a long crimson streak, 
as if a creature's blood had been shed there. This 
was the famous red snow, which is so frequently 
found in the Arctic regions and on the Alps, pro- 
duced by an immense multitude of microscopic 
plants, consisting only of gelatinous cells. Captain 
Ross on one occasion noticed a snowy ridge ex- 
tending eight miles in length, tinged with this 
singular hue to a depth of several feet. Vast 
masses of it spread over the Apennines in 1818; 
and it is recorded that in the beginning of this 
century the vicinity of Belluno and Feltre was 
covered with rose-coloured snow to the depth of 
twenty centimetres. The snow is not its natural 
situation, for it is found, like the nostoc and other 
gelatinous alg?e, on moist rocks in this country ; but 



iv.] RED SNOW. 237 

its great tenacity of life enables it not only to pre- 
serve its vitality when its germs fall on this ungenial 
surface, but to grow and propagate itself with the 
astonishing rapidity of its family, favoured by the 
heat of the sun and the melting of the snow. It 
grows and reproduces only upon thawing snow ; 
for although it may be found beneath virgin snow 
and in a temperature far below zero, in such cir- 
cumstances it has ceased all activity, and may 
remain in this condition for a long period. Its 
colour in this country, when growing on rocks, is 
green ; but it has been observed that there is a 
curious coincidence between a white ground and a 
red flower ; so that its brilliant carmine hue on the 
snow may be produced by the excess of light 
reflected by its chilly habitat. Had I not been 
familiar with this curious phenomenon — having 
seen it on the Alps — I should have been alarmed, 
naturally supposing that the crimson streaks had 
been shed from my own veins by the accident. 

At the next station beyond Holseth, called 
Stueflaaten, the valley of Romsdal fairly begins. 
From this point the view of grey Alpine peaks, 
seamed with watercourses, closing in and shutting 
up the vista to the westward, is very striking, and 
stimulates the imagination by the thought of 
grander scenes beyond. The road, recently recon- 
structed in the most admirable way, winds along 
by the side of the Rauma. No amount of praise 
bestowed upon this river can be exaggerated. It 
is the finest stream in Norway, combining features 



238 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

which are not united in any other river. Its course, 
though short, is exceedingly varied and turbulent. 
For twenty miles it has worn its way by the sheer 
force of its waters through schistose rocks, and 
formed deep circular basins, narrow channels, and 
projecting ledges, over and through which it 
thunders and foams in the wildest manner. The 
contrasts of colour exhibited by the pale malachite 
green of its linns, shading into black in the deeper 
parts, and the snowy whiteness of its cataracts, 
were very beautiful, and afforded a perpetual feast 
of delight. Wishing to enjoy the scenery in a 
calmer and more leisurely way, we walked between 
Stueflaaten and Ormen, a distance of nine miles. 
Although the heat was great and rendered exertion 
of any kind very fatiguing, I never enjoyed any 
walk so much ; my only regret being that it was so 
short. Every turn of the road opened up a new 
and grander scene than before — loftier precipices 
and wilder reaches of the river. Among the in- 
numerable waterfalls of the Rauma — many of 
which, deeply hidden between perpendicular walls 
of rock, can only be seen by lying down on the 
verge of the precipices and gazing over — the 
finest is the Sondre Slettefoss, a short distance 
from the road. An enormous body of water is 
here hurled about forty feet into a long deep cave 
worn in the rocks, from whence it issues through 
a rugged gorge fringed with hanging birches. 
The noise was deafening ; and the mists rising up 
from the abyss clung in wreaths to the black sides 



iv.] OR MEAL 239 

of the rocks and tossed the dripping " birches in 
their swirling eddies. It required a considerable 
amount of courage to stand on the brink and look 
over into this wild torment of waters. In a little 
sunny birch-wood beside this waterfall grew in 
greater profusion than elsewhere a little flower, 
called Smilacina bifolia^ peculiar to Norway. It 
is closely allied to the lily of the valley, having, 
like it, two broad leaves ; but its cream-coloured 
blossom is smaller, exceedingly delicate and foam- 
like. It completely hid the grass with its snowy 
sheen, and looked as though the foam of the 
waterfall borne by the wind to the spot had blos- 
somed into .flowers. A beautiful species of Smi- 
lacina, which grows from two to five feet high, and 
has plaited leaves and crowded panicles of white 
bell-shaped flowers, is found on the Himalayas. 
Its young flower-heads, sheathed in tender green 
leaves, are used as a pot-herb by the natives, under 
the name of chokli bi. 

Ormen, the next station, is most picturesquely 
situated on a rock overhanging the river, which 
here flows through a very narrow part of the defile. 
In front is a dense pine-wood ; and on the opposite 
side of the river a large stream flows obliquely 
down the face of the hill in one long line of white, 
dividing at last into two parts, and forming a series 
of waterfalls into the Rauma. A wooden bridge 
crosses at this point, and gives access to several 
comfortable sdeters and rich green pastures. Stor- 
hattan rises above the brow of the hill, but is not 



240 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

visible from the station-house, as an extensive 
table-land of snow intervenes. This isolated 
mountain, whose sphinx-like form, wherever it is 
seen, is one of the most striking features in the 
landscapes of Romsdal, is of great height, and 
commands from its sharp semicircular summit a 
vast range of snowy peaks. The ascent, which 
takes three hours, is very laborious and in some 
places highly dangerous. The whole of this region 
presents peculiar attractions to the sportsman, 
being famous for its game of all kinds. On the 
mountains reindeer are not unfrequently met ; the 
copses which run up the sides of the valley are the 
coverts of the hjerpe, or hazel-hen, and the skov- 
ryper, or wood-grouse ; while, in the pine-woods, 
the capercailzie (called by the natives stor-fugle or 
big bird) is sometimes seen, or at least heard, as 
it makes a startling noise, when it is disturbed, in 
crashing through the branches. The Norwegian 
squirrel, which differs from our species, is very 
numerous hereabouts. Like the Alpine hare and 
ptarmigan, it changes its colour in winter from 
brown to grey. The winter skin is greatly ad- 
mired, forming the petit gris of commerce, and 
is much worn by cardinals in Italy. Tracks of 
bears have occasionally been found at the foot of 
Storhattan. The day before we passed, broken 
branches, fresh droppings, and footprints were seen 
in the copse opposite the station-house, indicating 
that Bruin had been very recently there. The 
only place in Norway where one now has a chance 



IV.] THE ROMSDALHORN: 241 

of coming in contact with a bear or an elk is in 
Sseterdal. 

At Fladmark the river flows smoothly between 
richly wooded banks of alders and aspens, and here 
and there a green meadow sprinkled with golden 
globe flowers and white Alpine bistort. The water 
was of the loveliest green colour, and so clear and 
transparent that the mica stones could be seen 
glittering in the sunlight at the bottom. It was a 
perpetual baptism of refreshment ; while its plea- 
sant murmur marched along with us like the 
refrain of a song. From this point for fourteen 
miles we had an endless succession of the most 
magnificent views of precipices, peaks, and water- 
falls. The only place that can be compared to this 
part of Romsdal is Loch Corruisk in Skye. On 
one side is a series* of vertical walls of rock between 
two and three thousand feet high, with innumer- 
able waterfalls streaming down their sides or 
leaping sheer down from the top to the bottom, 
and filling all the air with the confused echoes of 
their shoutings. At the extremity of this chain 
of precipices towers up the famous Romsdalhorn, 
an inaccessible obelisk of granite between 2000 and 
3000 feet high, seeming quite close wherever one 
goes, and, like the Matterhorn, changing its shape 
according to the point of view. It is said that a 
blacksmith succeeded from behind in reaching the 
summit, where he erected a cairn of stones ; but this 
adventure, I am afraid, is mythical. At the foot 
of the horn there is a cleft called St. Olaf s Sword, 

R 



242 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

where the hero, like another Moses, by smiting the 
rock with his sword, is said to have produced a stream 
of water when he and his soldiers were perishing of 
thirst. On the other side of the gorge are lofty 
mountains weathered into the most fantastic and 
mimetic shapes. One curious point,, bearing some 
resemblance to a monk, is called Martin Luther ; 
and the whole range receives the name of the 
Troldtinderne or Goblin Peaks. They afford one 
of the most remarkable examples of the sculptur- 
ing effects of the air in its mechanical as well as 
chemical operations; a force which has not re- 
ceived the attention it deserves in geological 
dynamics. It not only decomposes when laden 
with moisture, but in the form of dry winds armed 
with the incisive thread of the sand or dust which 
they carry up with them, it acts like a gigantic 
lathe, driven with a power and speed greater than 
man's most cunning machinery, and capable of 
turning the most eccentric surfaces and carving 
into new forms whatever friable structure lies in 
its way. The breadth of the gorge from cliff 
to cliff may be about two miles, but it does not 
look a quarter of a mile, owing to the height of 
the precipices on either side. The Rauma, here 
a deep wide river, flows through it, reflecting on 
its placid bosom the grandeur around. Every- 
where the ground is strewn with huge boulders 
and fragments of rocks ; while green verdure and 
birch-woods struggle up the talus heaps which 
have crumbled from the weathered peaks above. 



iv.] AAK. 243 

All the woods by the roadside were covered as 
thick as they could grow with wild lilies of the 
valley, bearing a profusion of snowy blossoms, 
larger and more fragrant even than our garden 
ones. In the potato and corn fields, growing in 
great abundance as a common weed, was the 
beautiful Cornel (Cornus suecica) with its white 
bracts and curious corolla of black velvet — an 
Alpine plant which is only found in a few places 
on our highest Highland hills. The sun was 
setting when we arrived at the inn of Aak, and a 
rich crimson glow shone on the snowy pinnacles 
around, making them look like pyramids of solid 
fire ; while "a sky of inexpressible softness and 
beauty linked the glorified summits together, and 
gave the whole scene an ethereal look like fairy 
land. It was a place where the most callous- 
hearted might worship as in a temple ; and when 
from every birch and lily of the valley rose up on 
the still evening air a perfume most deliriously 
subtle and sweet, my senses were fairly intoxicated, 
and I will not now repeat the extravagant ana- 
logies that ran through my brain. 

Aak is the most comfortable and delightful place 
of residence in all Norway. The inn, which is a 
plain wooden building by the roadside, is kept by 
Andreas Landmark, a lensmand y or justice of the 
peace, who also owns a large portion of the valley, 
and the fishing of the Rauma for a mile or two. 
His wife is said to be a sister of the Bishop of 
Bergen, and his daughters can speak English very 

R 2 



244 



HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. 



[chap. 



correctly and fluently, especially Laura, who is a 
most admirable housekeeper, and attends per- 
sonally to the wants of the guests. Nowhere does 
the tourist feel so much at home or fare so well as 
here ; the visitors' book being full of the most glowing 
praises of the landlord and his daughters. Elsewhere 
semi-starved on jladbrod and that horrible cheese 
made of sugar and curd, which looks like a Bath- 
brick or a lump of diachylon, or half-poisoned by 
the cooking heresies of ignorant peasants, he here" 
revels in all the luxuries of the country properly 
prepared and served. The table is lavishly sup- 
plied with fish and game of various kinds, and wild 
fruits in the appropriate seasons. As for salmon, 
for which the Rauma is celebrated, thanks to the 
successful fishing of two Englishmen who lived 
at the inn, we got it so often, and in so many 
forms, that we were in the end perfectly sick of it. 
We understood, in a way that we never did before, 
the stipulation of Scotch servants in former times, 
when about to engage with a new master, that 
they were not to get salmon oftener than three 
times a week. There is certainly something in 
the air of Norway that acts in an extraordinary 
manner as a stimulant to appetite, for we our- 
selves found that two hours after a breakfast of the 
most solid and varied character, which if partaken 
of in this country would infallibly lead to a bilious 
attack, and a course of water-gruel for a fortnight, 
we were quite ready for another meal as sub- 
stantial. My bedroom, in a separate wing of the 



IV.] MOSQUITOES. 245 

house, was a small pigeon-hole of the most primi- 
tive kind, approached by a staircase so steep that 
I had to perform a series of severe gymnastic 
feats in getting up, and in going down to go 
backwards, cruelly scarifying my shins. How the 
chambermaid managed to bring up a tub full of 
water for ablutionary purposes, without breaking 
her neck or drowning herself, was a puzzle which 
I could not solve. But once in, the room was 
scrupulously neat and clean, and fragrant with 
freshly-gathered bouquets of lilies of the valley. 
The garden close by was a delightful retreat in 
the evening. It was well stocked with culinary 
vegetables, ~ which were merely in a germinating 
condition, and the cherry and apple trees were 
still loaded with blossoms, although it was the 
beginning of July. The ardent sunshine working 
night and day, however, would ripen the garden 
crop in this high latitude quite as soon as in our 
country. 

Saturday after our arrival was an exceedingly 
sultry day ; the thermometer ninety ^ degrees in 
the shade, and not a breath of wind moving even 
on the bank of the river. The mosquitoes were 
very troublesome, adhering so pertinaciously to our 
clothes that we could not drive them off; one 
member of our party suffering severely from their 
bites. This fondness of the mosquito for blood is 
an inexplicable fact in its history. It is not its 
natural food, for the insect abounds in places which 
no warm-blooded animal frequents, and where man 



246 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS, [chap. 

is never or rarely seen ; and when permitted to 
suck its fill it turns on its back and remains thus 
till it dies. This curious point deserves the study 
of the physiologist. The Norwegian name for this 
suicidal phlebotomizer is mouga or mouge, from 
whence is derived the Scotch word midge, the 
pest of our summer woods and river-sides. Lying 
gasping, perspiring, ' and tormented with heat and 
mosquitoes, under the shade of the trees, I looked 
up with longing eyes to the pure white snow-fields 
of the Goblin Peaks, so suggestive of coolness and 
vigour. In vain, however, for none of them could 
be climbed, and the exertion on such a day would 
be fearful. Across the river, right in front of the 
inn, is a hill of moderate height, clothed on the 
lower part with dense scrub, which promised to be 
easily accessible. It is called " Mid-dag Hill," be- 
cause the sun appears above its summit at noon, 
and it is thus a kind of public clock to the neigh- 
bourhood. A pathway leads up to the top, and 
ladies occasionally ascend. This circumstance 
caused my friend and myself to undervalue the 
difficulties of the ascent, and refuse the services of 
a guide. We were not long, however, in finding 
that we had been too rash and confident in going 
alone, for we lost the track, which was frequently 
concealed under huge wreaths of snow, the relics 
of the past winter, lingering there on account of 
the lateness of the season, and were surrounded 
by precipices in every direction. We managed 
with great difficulty to reach the highest point 



IV.] MID-DAG HILL. 247 

to which we could venture with safety, which was 
not more than thirty feet below the real summit. 
Here the ground, composed of comminuted schist 
and moistened by the melting of the snow, was 
carpeted with dense tufts of the beautiful Dia- 
pensia lapponicci) growing side by side with cushions 
equally dense of the moss campion. The former 
plant is peculiar to the Alps of Norway and the 
Arctic circle, and is distinguished by its large 
white strawberry-like blossom, which is produced 
so abundantly as almost to hide the foliage. The 
rosy flowers of the campion were equally abundant, 
so that together they made a lovely garden in the 
wilderness. .The lily of the valley, though much 
dwarfed, ascended here to within a hundred feet 
of the top, wherever there was soil in the crevices 
of the rocks. On the pure white quartz veins 
which protruded from the schist grew in immense 
quantity a black tufted lichen, of extremely rigid 
habit, called Cornicularia tristis^ which is one of 
the most Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine lichens 
in the world, being found at the extreme limit 
of vegetation on the Alps, Himalayas, and Andes, 
and in north and south latitudes. Over the shoulder 
of the hill we caught a glimpse of the Romsdal- 
horn, lifting its giant finger to heaven, as if up- 
braiding us for our foolhardiness in venturing so 
near it. It had a peculiar, weird, awful look, like 
one of the gods of Scandinavian mythology changed 
into stone, especially when a small wisp of mist — ■ 
mysteriously formed, for there was not a cloud in 



248 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the sky — rose up and partially veiled its summit. 
The view was wonderful, not only in its extent, 
but also in the peculiarity of its character. Green 
fjelds sloping down into the green Romsdal Fjord, 
and hiding in their recesses greener lakes, con- 
trasted in a curious way with snowy mountains, 
standing out boldly against a deep blue sky. As 
we descended it was interesting to watch the 
gradual closing of the boundary line, and the dis- 
appearance first of the snowy peaks, and then of 
the upland lakes, until at last the precipices of 
Aak confined our horizon. This descent gave us 
a considerable amount of anxiety, for, unlike the 
Scottish mountains, which slope down gradually 
to the valley and reveal their whole outline from 
the top to the bottom, this hill was exceedingly 
precipitous, and we could only see at a time about 
a dozen yards of steep rock below us, terminating 
abruptly in blank space, terribly suggestive to the 
imagination. We capped with stones the more 
prominent rocks by the side of the path as we 
ascended ; but these beacons were of no more use 
to us in our descent than the crumbs of bread 
which the boy in the fairy tale dropped on his 
track, for we got confused with the sameness and 
gigantic scale of the features of the hill. Our feel- 
ings of thankfulness and relief, therefore, in reaching 
the base in safety may be more easily imagined than 
described. Our gratitude was still further deepened, 
when, surveying the hill during our evening walk, 
we noticed how frequently we had come uncon- 



IV.] VIEW FROM MOLDE. 249 

sciously to the verge of precipices over which 
another step forward would have hurled us, to 
be dashed in pieces more than a thousand feet 
below. 

Sunday was a rainy day, and all the hills were 
covered to their bases with thick curtains of mist. 
It was a wild Sinai-like scene. When portions 
of the mist occasionally thinned away, revealing 
glimpses of the snow-flecked rocks, so pure and 
far up, it seemed like vistas opened in heaven — 
like the vision of Jacob's ladder, with angels as- 
cending and descending. The grand spire of this 
natural temple, the Romsdalhorn, was completely 
blotted out of the landscape ; but we heard now 
and then the muffled roar of its avalanches, its 
awful bell tolling in the darkness. On Monday 
we left the Romsdal valley with great regret, and 
embarking on board a steamer calling at Veblungs- 
naeset, we sailed down the fjord amid pine-clad 
rocks of the most fantastic forms, and islands 
white with eider ducks, terns, auks, and puffins. 
At Molde we landed for two hours. From an 
eminence behind the town, which is of considerable 
size, and carries on a large trade in fish and timber, 
we beheld the wonderfully grand and extensive 
view for which this place is celebrated, rank rising 
behind rank of lofty snow-peaks, until the last 
mingled with the white clouds in the distance. 
Conspicuous in the front row was the Romsdal- 
horn, the Matterhorn of Norway ; beyond was 
Snaehattan with its silver helmet : and to the 



250 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

south-east the huge fantastic horn of Perpuatind 
or Skjorten, curved round and covered all over 
with snow, even on the under curve. In this di- 
rection, farther away, were the shattered Aiguilles 
of the Langfjeld, and the lofty but unknown moun- 
tains at the head of the Stor Fjord.* No more 
bewildering array of Alpine peaks crowds upon 
the eye from the Righi Kulm. It far surpasses, 
in my estimation, the famous view of the giants 
of the Oberland from the platform of the Federal 
Hall at Berne. The Swiss picture lacks the sea, 
without which no mountain scenery, however grand, 
can be complete. But the waters of the Molde 
Fjord, spreading out into a wide island-studded 
basin, gave an idealistic charm to the vast amphi- 
theatre of mountains rising beyond ; and the lights 
and shades of a sunny day imparted to sea and 
mountain a witchery of hue and form which made 
them perfect. We gazed upon the. glorious sight 
with sense and soul stretched to the utmost tension 
of admiration. The proverb runs, " See the Bay 
of Naples and die ;" but I would say, " See the view 
from Molde, and have a joy for ever ! " 

It was eight o'clock at night when we reached 
Aalesund, a pretty large town, carrying on a con- 
siderable trade in codfish with Spain and Italy. 
It is situated amid a perfect fastness of rocks and 
water, quite inaccessible except to a Norwegian 
sailor ; while the views from it of the distant 
serrated snow-flecked peaks of the Langfjeld are 
very magnificent. The whole region around is 



IV.] A AH JEM. 251 

full of the most interesting historical associations. 
It was the country of the Sea Kings ; and from 
this wild robber's nest they swept down upon 
the defenceless coasts of England, Scotland, and 
France. Here are the ruins of the borg or castle 
of the famous Ganger Rolf, the founder of the 
Duchy of Normandy, and the ancestor of William 
the Conqueror. We landed in a boat at the quay, 
and went successively to the two inns in search 
of beds, but they were both full, owing to a court 
of justice then sitting. We had therefore to return 
and sleep on board the steamer. Next day we 
sailed, amid the same kind of scenery, down the 
Stor Fjord, calling at the different hamlets on the 
shores, and at the head of the intricate creeks ; 
and arrived at six o'clock in the evening at the 
extremity of a long arm of the fjord, where there 
was a little village called Aahjem. It was a most 
solitary place — " the world forgetting, by the 
world forgot." The daughter of the innkeeper had 
never seen an English lady before. The son, how- 
ever, a fine smart young man, who spoke a little 
English, had been to the Paris Exhibition ; and we 
found in the sitting-room the usual souvenirs of 
French travel. He was looked upon as a great 
man by the primitive inhabitants ; and certainly a 
more startling contrast could not be found than 
between the metropolis of fashion and this lonely, 
far-off Norwegian village. When we landed, the 
sky from end to end was of molten gold without a 
single cloud, while the sun trembled in a furnace of 



252 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

dazzling brilliancy above the waters of the fjord, 
which seemed like a brazen sea. The surrounding 
mountains were purple with light, and looked as 
ethereal as clouds ; while the universal stillness 
seemed like the awe and reverence of nature at 
the great sight. Among moist friable cliffs at a 
considerable height above the village, decked with 
starry saxifrages and Alpine alchemilla, I gathered 
a great many rare cryptogamic plants ; and a birch- 
wood copse at the foot is especially memorable 
as the spot where I first noticed in Norway the 
Linncea borealis, afterwards so common and familiar. 
Here, also, in a pool by the roadside, I noticed a 
large number of the familiar Gordius or Hair-worm. 
I had not seen it since I was a schoolboy, when 
I used, with my companions, to amuse myself by 
putting horse-hairs into brooks about the end of 
summer, with the expectation of finding them 
endowed with life in a few days. The super- 
stition is very wide-spread, both in this country 
and in America, that the Gordius is a transformed 
horse-hair, which indeed it resembles very closely 
in colour, shape, and size. It is a species of 
entozoa, living in the interior of grasshoppers and 
other insects, and passing from their dead bodies 
into the earth or into water. 

On the following morning we took carrioles and 
drove up a very steep Alpine road, over a moun- 
tain plateau, studded with numerous tarns. On the 
top of the mountain, beside a lake, we saw a sceter 
or mountain farm, to which the cattle are sent to 



IV.] SMTER-LIFE. 253 

pasture in spring and summer, under the care of 
the daughters and female servants of the farmer. 
Upon these saeters there are houses of very rude 
construction, and very poorly furnished, in which 
the tenants live and carry on all their dairy-work. 
This sseter-life, alone on the mountains for four 
months in the year, must be very dreary and mo- 
notonous. The servants say that they could not 
endure it, were it not that their lovers come up to 
see them on the Saturday evenings, when they 
put on their best dresses and faces, and have a 
feast of dairy produce and a merry dance. This 
custom, however, has been formally prohibited by 
Government, on account of the injury done on 
such occasions to the game, for the lovers try to 
kill two birds with one stone. The saeter which 
we passed was certainly a very lonely place ; the 
pasturage was scanty, and the house a mere hovel 
of rough unmortared stones, with a hole in the turf 
roof for a chimney, and another in the wall for a 
window. The cattle were very small, and wandered 
about with bells round their necks, making a sweet 
musical tinkle that increased the loneliness and 
sadness of the place. It is not wonderful that in 
such a region should have arisen the strange super- 
stition of the Huldre, a mountain spirit who goes 
forth in the morning with her spectral herd of voice- 
less and milkless cows, following at a distance the 
cattle from the tro> or fold, when they are driven 
out to the pastures, and returning with them in the 
evening. The saeter-girls collect during the summer 



254 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

immense quantities of the reindeer-moss from the 
fjelds ; and when the autumn storms sweep the 
snow down the sides of the mountains, and cover 
up with its smooth uniform surface the steep and 
almost impassable roads, the farmer brings the 
moss, frozen into hard compact masses, on sledges 
down into the valley, w T here it forms an essential 

part of the winter fodder of the cattle in this 

« 

district. 

After a fatiguing drive of about three hours, 
exposed to the scorching sunshine on bare treeless 
moorland, we came down to a station hidden in a 
nook of the Nord fjord, called Bryggen. The 
whole of this region is beyond the ordinary 
tourist's ground, and is quite fresh and unexplored. 
Mr. Murray's guide has not penetrated into the 
scenery of the Nord fjord, some parts of which are 
truly grand and Alpine in character. Here we 
were admitted for the first and only time into the 
bosom of a Norwegian family. On all other occa- 
sions, travelling on frequented ground, we were 
treated as tourists, and got our meals in our own 
rooms. But here we were treated as guests and 
dined with the members of the household. If it 
was "pot-luck" we got, the proprietor must have 
been uncommonly well off to keep such a table, 
loaded with fish, flesh, and fowl. Our hostess did 
not sit with her husband and children. She brought 
in the dishes, and attended to the comfort of the 
guests. This created an unpleasant feeling in our 
minds ; but apologies or entreaties to sit down with 



iv.] BRYGGEN. 255 

us would have been misplaced, as in Norway the 
lady of the house considers it her especial duty to 
superintend the operations of her servants, and 
make her guests perfectly comfortable. 

In this part of the Nord fjord there were little 
creeks, where the shore sloped gradually down 
into the pro founder depths. In this shallow water 
grew large quantities of wrack, dulse, tangle, and 
other common sea-weeds. Owing to the great 
depth of the water, into which the rocky shores 
descend abruptly, these sea-weeds are rare in 
Norway. Only in one other place did I notice 
anything like the sight which our weedy sea- 
shores present when the tide has ebbed. Usually 
there is but the slightest fringe of sea-vegetation 
marking the water-line along the rocky shore ; 
and in many of the fjords even this is absent. At 
the head of the Sogne fjord, upwards of 120 miles 
from the open sea, there are no sea-weeds lining 
the precipitous shores. The water at the surface 
is almost fresh ; indeed, I saw a sailor putting 
down a bucket into this stratum and drinking the 
contents. The influence of the tide is little felt ; 
and the river that empties itself into it overlies 
the heavier salt water, and prevents by its intense 
coldness and freshness the growth even of the 
green ulvas and enteromorphas which in this 
country mark the junction between fresh and salt 
water. Owing to the absence of vegetation, fish 
and other fauna of the sea are rare ; so that the 
inhabitants have not this source of supply to eke 



256 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

out the scanty produce of their miserable corn and 
potato fields. In the creeks of the Nord fjord, 
however, there was an unusual abundance of shell- 
fish and other forms of sea-life lurking among the 
dark tufts of fuci and tangle. I gathered a few 
specimens of Natica Groenlandica, an^ Arctic and 
circumpolar mollusc, which becomes rarer and 
smaller towards the south ; and of Pecten islandi- 
cu's, which does not reach Britain. 

While gathering these northern shells, I thought 
of the remarkable parallelism between the dis- 
tribution of the Arctic fauna and flora in Britain. 
Just as we have the remains of an Arctic flora, 
once overspreading the whole country, on the 
summits of our highest mountains, so we have the 
remains of an Arctic fauna which peopled all our 
seas during the Glacial epoch in the profoundest 
depths of our western sea-lochs, such as Loch 
Fyne and the Kyles of Skye. A little south of 
Tarbert, Loch Fyne deepens into a basin 624 feet 
below the surface of the water, a far greater depth 
than that of the sea outside, and clearly indicating 
that this narrow inlet is a submerged land valley, 
whose bed, if sufficiently upheaved, would be 
marked by a fresh-water loch, like Loch Lomond. 
From this profound abyss Professor E. Forbes 
and Mr. Mc Andrew, in 1845, brought up with the 
dredge an extraordinary assemblage of molluscan 
animals, eminently Arctic in their character, once 
common in all our seas, ranging from the shore- 
line downwards. When the beds of these glacial 



iv.] ARCTIC SHELLS. 257 

seas were upheaved, several of the more delicate 
molluscs perished under the change of conditions, 
while others more accommodating survived. As 
the climate became more genial, the northern 
and Arctic shells that lived in the littoral zones 
retreated northwards, driven out by the migration 
of more temperate forms. Those that had greater 
capacities for vertical range, however, remained 
behind in the deepest parts of our sea-lochs, where 
the conditions of temperature were still suitable ; 
and to this narrow range they are now restricted. 
The extreme scarcity of these Arctic shells in a 
living state, and the comparative abundance of 
dead valves, seem to indicate, as Professor Forbes 
suggested, that the species thus isolated are now 
slowly dying out : so that the time may not be 
far distant when the last of the Arctic forms of 
the mountain-top and sea-bottom will disappear 
before the inroads of plants and animals of a 
milder climate, that will spread uniformly over all 
parts of land and sea. In connexion with the 
marine animals of Norway the singular fact may 
be mentioned, that some of its characteristic Arctic 
species occurring in a living state in the deepest 
abysses are found as fossils in Italy and Sicily ; 
and that other perfectly identical species are found 
living at the present day in the Mediterranean 
and Adriatic and in the North Sea, which are 
absent in the intervening waters of the Atlantic, 
the only route by which, according to the present 
arrangement of Europe, they could have reached 

S 



258 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the one locality from the other. Among the living 
species common to Italy and Norway are Nephrops 
Norvegicus, the Norway lobster, sometimes seen in 
our fish-markets, Lota abyssorum, Sebastes imperia- 
lism Macrourus coelorkyncktis, Cetochilus septentrio- 
nalis which forms the chief food of the Arctic 
whales but also occurs at Nice, and two shells 
found by Professor Sars of Christiania, in the sea 
at Bergen, Cerithium vulgatum^ and Monodonta 
limbata. The presence of these mollusca in the 
Mediterranean and in Norway, while they are 
absent from the intermediate coast, is supposed 
to be owing to a connexion that existed during 
the Post-Pliocene period to the east of Europe, 
between the Mediterranean and the North Sea, 
which was interrupted at a later period by the 
elevation of the Alps. 1 It was very much owing 
to the discovery of a race of animals in the Nor- 
wegian waters by Professor Sars, supposed to be 
extinct for several geological epochs, that the recent 
exploration of our own seas at great depths was 
undertaken, which has produced such wonderful 
results — among others the discovery of the living 

1 This theory is still further confirmed by the flora of Sweden. 
Several of the most characteristic plants of Gothland, an island in the 
Gulf of Bothnia — such as Helianthemum fumana, Inula ensifolia, and 
Serapias rubra — are identical with those of the limestone mountains 
of Austria; while the vegetation of the neighbouring island of 
Oland is of a decidedly Mediterranean, or even African, type. 
Among its rarer plants may be mentioned Helianthemum CElandicum, 
Carex obtusata, Artemisia laciniata, Anemone sylvestris, Ulmus effusa, 
and Viola persicifolia. 



IV.] HORNELEN ROCK. 259 

crinoid or " stone-lily" (Rhizocrinus Lofotensis), in 
many parts of the Atlantic from the Loffoden Isles 
to the Gulf of Mexico. 

At nine o'clpck at night a Government steamer 
employed in the postal service, and carrying on 
the traffic with all the stations on the Bergen 
route, appeared in sight. We rowed out to it in 
a small boat, and then steamed down the fjord, 
through the most intricate labyrinths of hills and 
islands. There is one rock rising 1200 feet per- 
pendicularly from the water, shaped like a huge 
cathedral with a gigantic tower at either end. It 
is called Hornelen, and our steamboat was named 
after it. It is the loftiest and most massive sea- 
cliff in Norway south of the Loffoden Isles. A 
great slice of it had fallen down two years pre- 
viously, about two hours after a steamer had 
passed. The scar was still fresh on its side, and 
the debris formed a talus bank at the foot pro- 
jecting into the sea. The depth of the water in 
this narrow channel is said to be very great, there 
being no soundings for two thousand feet. After 
spending some hours on deck, admiring the wild 
and ever-changing scenery, and watching the 
giving out empty and taking in full herring-barrels 
at the different stations at which we called, we 
retired to our berths and slept till about seven 
o'clock in the morning, when we found ourselves 
among the skerries on the coast, within forty 
miles of Bergen. These rocky islets are very 
remarkable. They occur in countless numbers all 

s % 



•260 HO LI DA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

along the coast from Christiania to the North 
Cape, and though composed of gneiss afford a 
striking proof of the tremendous abrading action 
of one of the stormiest seas in the world. They 
are of various sizes, from a huge boulder barely- 
rising above the level of the water,' to lofty cas- 
tellated crags many acres in extent, and are either 
•bare or covered with shrubs or fir-trees. Between 
them the sea winds in and out in the most intricate 
fashion, and they are so like each other that it is 
astonishing how the pilot can thread his way 
among them. There is never any of that sloping 
which distinguishes the shores of other countries. 
Quite close to the rocks the depth is in some 
places unfathomable. In many instances the 
narrow creeks and channels run far inland, so that 
it is frequently necessary to journey a hundred 
miles by land between two places not more than 
two or three miles apart in a straight line. Many 
of the skerries are shaped like the Devonshire tors ; 
they are what are called in geological language 
roches moutonn&s, rounded, smoothed, and polished 
hummocks, moulded by the passage of a thick 
body of ice over them during the Glacial epoch, 
and marked, many of them very distinctly, by 
close parallel flutings, indicating the direction of 
the moving ice. From these glacial markings, 
where no ice is now to be seen, we can trace by 
the characteristic evidence of striae, moraines and 
boulders; the course of ancient glaciers up to the 
great ice-fields of Justedal and the Folgefond, 

- ! 



IV.] RISING OF NORWEGIAN COAST. 261 

still existing in the interior. We must regard 
the present glaciers of Norway as the shrunken 
remains and silent witnesses, in a milder climate, 
of immense glaciers which at one time stretched 
down and filled each valley, and went out to 
sea like the glaciers of Greenland at the present 
day. 

The glaciated skerries, judging from the pro- 
found depths of water around them, are the tops 
of submerged mountains, and the fjords that wind 
among them deep glens that have not yet fairly 
risen out of the sea. Such fjords are for this 
reason almost, if not quite, confined to northern 
latitudes. This is especially observable on the 
west coast of America, which is uniform and mono- 
tonous from Valparaiso to Vancouver's Island, but 
is remarkably broken into intricate fjords from 
Vancouver's Island northward. These fjords were 
originally valleys hollowed out by the action of 
glaciers, and afterwards sufficiently depressed for 
the sea to enter them. That Norway has been 
slowly rising from the sea within comparatively 
recent times is proved by many indisputable signs. 
On the shoal or bank which lies out in the 
Christiania fjord to the west of Drobak, and which 
is from sixty to ninety feet deep, there are im- 
mense masses of a peculiar coral called Oculina 
prolifera^ firmly attached to the solid rock, though 
dead and stripped bare of its formative polyps. 
This coral is found on the western and northern 
coast of Norway in a living state, only at the great 



262 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

depth of from iooo to 2000 feet, where it forms 
large, bush-shaped clusters about two feet in 
diameter. The fact of its occurrence in a dead 
state on the Drobak bank proves beyond doubt 
that that bank was elevated to the extent of at 
least 800 feet, when the polyps, incapable of 
bearing the increased temperature of the shallower 
water, died in situ. On the same bank, also in a 
dead state, is found the Lima excavata^ a species 
of shell-fish which lives only in the region of the 
deep-sea corals, at from 150 to 300 fathoms. Pro- 
fessor Forbes and Mr. Robert Chambers speak of 
"the great freshness of the raised terraces which 
stretch at various heights along the coast, as if 
to show where the surf had beaten during prolonged 
intervals in the course of upheaval." On these 
terraces vast quantities of shells are frequently 
found identical with those living in the neighbour- 
ing seas, and looking as fresh as if they had been 
cast ashore only yesterday. Brogniart found 
balanus shells on the solid rock at Udevalla, on 
the Swedish coast of the Cattegat, 200 feet above 
the present level of the sea, and Keilhau near 
Hellesda, in Aremark, 450 feet above the sea. 
The last accomplished geologist pointed out to 
Mr. Robert Chambers serpulae still adhering to 
the face of a rock about a mile from Christiania, 
186 feet above the surface of the fjord. 

To show still further that the land was elevated 
during the existence of its present fauna, I may 
mention that in the great Swedish fresh-water lakes 



IV.] MARINE CRUSTACEA. 263 

Wenner and Wetter certain Crustacea have recently 
been discovered by Professor Loven at profound 
depths, which were previously known only as marine 
species inhabiting the Arctic and Baltic seas. The 
younger Sars, when dredging in the deepest parts 
of a fresh-water lake in the neighbourhood oi 
Christiansund, close to the west coast, found to his 
astonishment the mud full of a small red Copepode, 
in which he at once recognised the salt-water 
species Harp adieus chelifer of Lilljeborg. The 
presence of this crustacean was so unexpected, that 
in spite of the fresh-water forms which he had also 
found, he was obliged to satisfy himself by tasting 
that the water was not brackish. In the Miosen 
Lake he subsequently discovered two species of 
Cythere, My sis relicta and Gammarus cancelloides ; 
while in ponds in the environs of Christiania he 
discovered the curious Amphipode, Pontoporeia 
affiniS) whose males are numerous, having their 
antennae, except in a few individuals, imperfectly 
developed and presenting a very peculiar appear- 
ance until towards the end of autumn, when they 
assume their ultimate form — the animal in both 
stages being perfectly fertile. The presence of these 
marine crustaceans in the Scandinavian lakes, living 
only in the deepest parts of the water, and quite se- 
parate from the true fresh-water forms of Crustacea, 
proves that during the Glacial epoch the basin of 
the Baltic was in communication with either the 
eastern or the western Arctic ocean ; and that 
in the gradual elevation of the Scandinavian pen- 



264 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

insula these marine creatures were cut off from 
their natural habitats, but were able to accommo- 
date themselves successfully to altered conditions of 
life, when their isolated basins changed from salt 
to fresh water. But perhaps, after all, the cir- 
cumstances are not so changed for them as we 
should suppose ; for it has been found by a series 
of experiments recently made by Sir Robert 
Christison in the fresh-water lakes of Scotland, 
that on every occasion the water was more saline 
in its deepest parts than at the surface, and de- 
cidedly more coloured, which is contrary to the 
popular notion that the deepest water is the pur- 
est. At the bottom of our very deep Highland 
lakes there is a vast body of still water which 
undergoes little or no change or movement, and 
which therefore will become impregnated with 
whatever is soluble in the bed on which it rests, 
while a good deal of the old saltness of the sea 
is retained. This fact should lead to the dredging 
of our deeper lakes, for they have passed through 
similar geological changes to those of Scandinavia. 
That the field is not unlikely to prove productive 
has been more than indicated by the discovery 
of truly marine microscopic Crustacea in fresh- 
water lakes in the west of Ireland. Lochlomond, 
from the occurrence in it of a well-known fresh- 
water herring, is likely in its deepest part, which 
is upwards of 600 feet, to yield abnormal forms, 
which will add another to its already numerous 
evidences of having been originally an arm of 
the sea. 



IV.] EUROPE ONCE AN ISLAND, 265 

The elevation of the Scandinavian peninsula 
throws some light upon the ideas of the ancients 
regarding Hyperborean geography, which seem to 
us mythical. There is a tradition, for instance, 
as old as the times of the Argonauts, that there 
was at one period a water communication between 
the Euxine and the Hyperborean seas. The 
voyage of Ulysses must evidently have taken this 
course, if we are to accept the geographical details 
of Homer. Between the Black Sea and the Baltic 
the connecting strip of land nowhere rises to a 
height of 300 feet above the level of the sea, and 
is overlaid with recent alluvial deposits. If the 
waters of the Black Sea ever stood at a higher 
level than they do now — and there are many local 
circumstances which prove this to have been the 
case — then this tract must have been submerged, 
and Central and Southern Europe converted into a 
vast island, separated from another island of Scan- 
dinavia by a continuous strait. The Caspian Sea 
was once connected with the Black Sea, and 
through it with the Baltic, in the manner described, 
as is proved by the fact that the fauna now inhabit- 
ing its waters have considerable affinities with North 
Sea types. Two species of seal are now living, one 
in the Caspian Sea, and the other in the fresh-water 
lake Baikal, in the centre of the great Asiatic con- 
tinent, which are similar to those of Norway and 
the North Atlantic. By the elevation of the Sar- 
matian plain, the level of the Caspian Sea has 
been reduced 83 feet below the present surface of 



266 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the Black Sea ; and at this point the level of this 
great inland basin is as permanent as that of the 
ocean, — the precipitation and evaporation being 
exactly equal. A depression of 500 feet would 
bring once more the Arctic Sea over the areas both 
of the Caspian and Lake Baikal. 

While on this subject I may mention another 
interesting fact connected with Scandinavia and 
our own country. In the Fen counties of England 
there is a very remarkable fauna peculiar to that 
region and the opposite shores of the German 
Ocean. Among these may be mentioned various 
white fishes of the family Cyprinidae, such as 
roach, dace, chub, and bream, which have now 
been distributed either by natural or artificial 
agencies to various parts of England, and even 
to Ireland, but were originally confined to East 
Anglia, and attain their highest development in 
the rivers and lakes of Sweden. These fresh-water 
fishes, which are utterly incapable of living in salt 
water, indicate that the rivers in the East of 
England, as well as those of North-western Europe, 
flowed through the dry bed of the present German 
Ocean into a great estuary situated between Britain 
and Norway. From some common source at this 
time they spread into the rivers and lakes where they 
are now found. An additional proof of this theory, 
first stated by Edward Forbes, is found in the 
presence in the River Cam, of the curious eel-pout 
or burbot {Molva lota), which is utterly unlike any 
other fresh-water_ fish of Europe. It belongs to 



IV.] PECULIAR FAUNA OF THE FENS. 267 

the same genus as the ling {Molva vulgaris), and 
was originally a deep-sea fish. It must have 
migrated from the Baltic or the Northern Ocean 
to the Fen rivers, when there was a free river 
connexion between our country and the continent ; 
and, owing to the changes on sea and land that 
subsequently ensued, as well as the modification 
of its own form and habits produced by its new 
home, never found its way back to its native salt 
water. At Foulmine, on the edge of the Cam- 
bridge fens, is also found the edible frog of the 
Continent ; and in the Ouse and Little Ouse the 
remains of the fresh-water tortoise, Emys Ltitaria, 
now an inhabitant only of Bavaria, Austria, Poland, 
and East' Prussia. Steenstrup and Nillson have 
also discovered its shells in peat-bogs in Sweden 
and Denmark. The Entomostraca of the Dutch 
river Scheldt are remarkably similar to those 
of the Norfolk Ouse and the Oulton Broad in 
Suffolk. They are the last surviving represen- 
tatives of a group of species which inhabited a 
large lagoon-covered district between England and 
Holland, the water of which was but slightly 
brackish. In company with this peculiar fauna 
of the fens is found an exquisite little bird, with 
long tail, orange-tawny plumage, and black mou- 
stache, now all but extinct — the bearded tit 
(Calarnophilus biarmicus). Connected with no 
other English bird, its central home is in the 
marshes of Eastern Europe, from whence it spread 
to England, attracted by the mollusks upon which 



268 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

it fed abounding in the lagoons on the present 
site of the German Ocean ; from which countries 
it was subsequently cut off by the submergence 
of the intermediate land. All these creatures, 
peculiar in their character, restricted in their dis- 
tribution, and now separated by a wide expanse 
of sea, must have sprang in recent geological times 
from one common centre. The sunken pine-forests 
of Brancaster, and the raised beach of Hunstanton 
on the north-east corner of the Wash, indicate, 
as Mr. Kingsley observes, the slow upheavals and 
depressions by which the changes referred to, on the 
surface of North-western Europe, were produced. 

Every traveller is greatly struck with the re- 
semblance, only on a larger scale, between the 
coast of Norway and the coast-scenery of the 
West Highlands of Scotland. The same causes, 
acting in similar circumstances, produced this re- 
semblance. In Scotland these causes have long been 
quiescent, and we can only speculate and theorize 
regarding their mode of action in the remote past. 
But in Norway they are still in operation, and their 
modifying effects may be seen fresh and recent in 
many places. Norway may be regarded as a con- 
necting link between the present state of Green- 
land and the state of Scotland during the Glacial 
epoch. When Scotland had its glaciers and snow- 
fields, Norway was completely enveloped in ice ; 
and now that the line of perpetual snow has gone 
beyond the summits of our highest hills, we recall 
in the perpetual snow regions of Norway the ap- 



IV.] NORWEGIAN FAUNA IN SCOTLAND. 269 

pearance of our own country at the close of the 
Glacial epoch/ when the glaciers were retreating 
from the coast into the high grounds of the in- 
terior. Not only in geological development, but 
also so far as progress during the Historical epoch 
is concerned, Norway may be regarded as "a 
larger Scotland post-dated," a country still in its 
green youth, while Scotland is in its old age. The 
forests that overspread its surface at the present 
day are like the extensive forests of Scotland 
during the Roman invasion, whose remains are 
found in our numerous peat-mosses. The existing 
Norwegian fauna once roamed in our woods and 
hills. In Caithness the reindeer lingered until 
about the beginning of the thirteenth century. 
The Orkneyinga Saga relates that the Jarls of 
Orkney crossed over to the mainland to hunt it in 
the twelfth century. According to tradition, the 
last wolf in Scotland was slain in 1680 by the 
famous Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel. So nu- 
merous were wolves before that period that large 
tracts of the Highland forests were set on fire in 
order to expel them ; and to avoid their ravages in 
rifling graves, the inhabitants were obliged to bury 
their dead in islands off the coast or in inland lochs 
at some distance from land. Indeed it is exceed- 
ingly probable that the huge cromlechs and cairns 
of ponderous stones raised over the dead in primi- 
tive times may have originated in the desire to 
protect the bodies of the dead from wolves. The 
dread of this ravenous animal may have driven the 



270 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

primitive inhabitants of the north of Scotland from 
the valleys overgrown with woods to the ridges of 
our most elevated mountains, where we now view 
with surprise their wretched remains, and the traces 
of obsolete modes of agriculture. There is ample 
evidence to prove that the brown bear lived in this 
country less than a thousand years ago. Up to 
the middle of last century the capercailzie, or 
great cock of the woods, the largest member of 
the grouse family, abounded in our woods. It 
disappeared with the destruction of the Caledonian 
forest, the cones of which formed its principal food ; 
and though it has been reintroduced from Norway, 
it is confined to one or two districts, where it is 
almost as tame as a barn-door fowl. In the 
highest solitudes of the Grampians still linger the 
Alpine. hare and ptarmigan, the last survivors of 
the ancient Norwegian fauna of our country, which 
owe their preservation to their power of adapting 
themselves to their circumstances, changing the 
colour of their fur and plumage — a provision which 
not only regulates the temperature of their bodies 
according to the changes of the seasons, but by 
assimilating them to the prevailing colours of the 
scenes amid which they live, enables them to elude 
the keen eyes of their numerous enemies. Thus 
the wild animals of Norway are those which for- 
merly lived in Scotland, but are now nearly all 
extinct. The manners and customs of the Nor- 
wegians in the remoter districts are also those of 
our ancestors several hundred years ago, and their 



IV.] BERGEN, 271 

udal system of land proprietorship is that which 
existed in Scotland prior to the introduction of 
clanship and feudalism, and the remains of which 
may still be seen in the existence among us of 
"bonnet lairds," similar to the Norwegian "bonder," 
who cultivate the small properties which they 
inherit. Thus a visit to Norway gives the Scotch- 
man an admirable idea of the appearance of his 
country and the condition of his ancestors in the 
Middle Ages. 

No incident of any moment occurred while we 
threaded our way in and out among the endless 
skerries, which were so like one another that we 
were often, puzzled by seeing in front of us a 
peculiar rock which we fancied we had left miles 
behind, and were lost in admiration of the skill 
of the pilot. We arrived at Bergen at two o'clock, 
and were delighted with its picturesque appearance 
and romantic situation. It is built upon two bays 
of the fjord, with a narrow point of elevated land 
between them, on which stands the fortress of 
Bergenhuus, where formerly stood the palace of 
King Olaf, the founder of the town. It is sur- 
rounded by steep and rugged mountains, between 
two and three thousand feet high, so that you have 
all the bustle of a commercial town quite close to 
the loneliness and grandeur of an Alpine solitude. 
The narrow harbour is always crowded with ship- 
ping, and the suburbs at the base of the mountains 
are occupied with gardens, and country villas 
embosomed among woods, with green lawns sloping 



272 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

down to the fjord. Outside the town there is a 
magnificent avenue of old linden trees about a mile 
long, from whence beautiful glimpses of the sur- 
rounding scenery may be obtained. This is the 
most northern limit of this tree, and yet it is as 
full grown and majestic here as in the avenues of 
England or Germany. We heard a sermon in the 
fine old cathedral, and inspected the antiquities 
arid objects of natural history in the museum. 
The antiquities are principally sepulchral urns, 
arms, Runic inscriptions, Norwegian coins dating 
from the time of Haco the Good in the tenth 
century, and a curious old Byzantine picture pre- 
sented to one of the churches in the Sogne fjord 
in the eleventh century by a sea-king who had 
procured it from Constantinople. I observed 
that there were no contributions to this depart- 
ment from the Arctic provinces. Worsaae, the 
director of the Museum of Northern Antiquities at 
Copenhagen, informed me, while conducting me 
over the rooms devoted to relics of the Stone 
period, that all these stone implements came from 
Denmark and the southern parts of Sweden and 
Norway — none having been found in the northern 
parts. The inference is therefore clear that these 
northern provinces were unoccupied by man during 
the earliest ages of British and continental history. 
This theory coincides with the evidences of phy- 
sical geography, and points to the gradual amelio- 
ration of the climate in these regions. 

We were greatly amused by the extraordinary 






IV.] FISH-MARKET OF BERGEN, 273 

character and variety of the costumes of the pea- 
sants from the surrounding districts, who came in 
to Bergen to do their marketing. Some of these 
peasants are said to be of Scotch extraction — a 
large colony of Scotchmen having settled about 
the twelfth century in the neighbourhood of 
Bergen. Some of the women had white shirt- 
sleeves, scarlet jackets, gorgeous breastplates of 
coloured beads, and white caps of the most ex- 
traordinary shapes and dimensions. Others had 
green jackets and dark caps. It is a great pity 
that both in Switzerland and Norway the pic- 
turesque costumes of the peasants should to so 
large an extent be abandoned for the uniform 
and unmeaning dress • of all classes throughout 
Europe. We paid a visit to the fish-market, which 
is one of the most interesting sights of the place. 
All the fish— of which there is an immense variety 
— are brought in alive, and kept swimming about 
in tubs of salt water until purchased ; for a Nor- 
wegian would never think of buying a dead fish ; 
he likes to be assured by more senses than one 
that it is quite fresh. Among the fish we noticed 
grey gurnards, torskwrasse, of many colours, and 
coalfish [Gadus carbonarius) in shape and size like 
a salmon, with a black back and a silvery belly. 
There were also a few specimens of the bergelt, or 
Norwegian haddock (Sebastes Norvegicus), some- 
what like a perch, which exhibits all the hues of 
the gold fish. It is caught in very deep water 
with long sea-lines, and is considered a great 

T 



274 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

delicacy. Bergen has the reputation of being one 
of the rainiest places in the world. The average 
number of rainy days in the year is said to be 200. 
This extreme humidity is shown not only in the 
actual amount of the rainfall, but in the almost 
constant presence of large quantities of aqueous 
vapour in the atmosphere, even on days that are 
considered clear and bright. This constant wet 
blanket spread over the town, if it does damp 
the joys of the inhabitants and engender melan- 
choly "vapours," gives compensation by greatly 
modifying the severity of the winter. Probably 
the range of temperature throughout the year is 
smaller and the mean annual temperature higher 
in Bergen than in any other place so far from the 
equator. During our residence, however, there was 
not a cloud in the sky, which was as deep-blue and 
transparent as that of France or Italy. The heat 
was tropical, and we had to dodge the sun con- 
tinually in our walks through the dusty and glow- 
ing streets. The mere effort of writing a letter 
in a room where all the windows were thrown 
wide open threw me into a profuse perspiration. 
I love to look back upon the wonderful beauty of 
the nights we spent at Bergen. From my bed- 
room window I looked out for hours with intense 
enjoyment of the scene. Below, the gaily-painted 
houses looked ghostly in the tender twilight that 
brooded over them ; above, the moon shone large 
and golden in the blue languid sky, casting down a 
path of light along the surface of the placid fjord. 



IV.] BERGEN FJORD. 275 

The mountains, mellowed down and empurpled by 
the sunset, reposed with a dream-like beauty on 
the near horizon ; while the stillness was broken 
by sounds that harmonized with it — the ripple of 
a passing oar, or a simple song heard clear and 
distinct from afar. The whole air and appearance 
of the place at such a time reminded me more 
of Oriental cities described in the Arabian Tales, 
than a matter-of-fact Norwegian town, crammed 
with odoriferous stock-fish and casks of cod- 
liver oil. 

We left Bergen at six o'clock on Saturday 
morning for a trip to the Hardanger Fjord. Our 
route was somewhat circuitous ; but we adopted 
it in preference to the more direct course south 
of Bergen, as it embraced some of the finest and 
most characteristic scenery in that part of Norway. 
The steamer in which we embarked was about the 
size of a small steam ferry-boat, with a high pres- 
sure engine, which produced a loud snorting noise 
and a disagreeable vibration in every part of the 
vessel. Passing through the Bergen Fjord, we 
entered the Bolstadoren branch of it, and had 
a most delightful run over a placid sea, which 
reflected pine-clad precipices on its shores, and 
bright blue skies, with such exquisite distinctness, 
that we seemed to be sailing over a submerged 
world. All went well till about one o'clock in 
the afternoon, when we came to a place where 
the calm bosom of the, Fjord broke into foaming 
rapids. The boat put on full steam, and gallantly 

T 2 



276 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

essayed to make headway against the current. But 
there was not sufficient depth of water to carry 
her over the bar ; consequently she grounded, and 
was carried helplessly down by the stream, her 
bottom rasping on the rough stones in the channel. 
Finding it impossible to overcome fhe barrier, the 
captain moored the boat to a huge granite boulder 
.close to the shore, and resolved to wait till the tide 
should return and give him sufficient depth of water 
to get up to his destination. We were hemmed 
in on both sides by lofty walls of rock, and the 
sun streamed down upon us with scorching power ; 
the precipices reflecting and concentrating the 
heat until we felt as if in an oven. To add to 
our discomfort we had set out in the morning 
upon a single cup of coffee, and a rusk each, ex- 
pecting to get our breakfast on board the steamer. 
In this we were disappointed, and were obliged 
to appease the cravings of hunger by a few bis- 
cuits, and a bottle of stale luke-warm ale, which 
was all the captain could give us. Helplessly im- 
prisoned, every minute seemed as long as an hour ; 
the slightest incident was made the most of to 
divert our attention from the heat and hunger 
that were consuming us. We joked with some 
peasants who were busy hay-making on the bank 
beside us, and watched with interest several beau- 
tiful young horses as they swam after their master's 
boat across the turbulent waters to the other side. 
But at last even the patience of the ladies was 
exhausted, and rather than wait five hours longer 



IV.] BOLSTADOREN FJORD. 217 

for the chance of getting on by the steamer, we 
agreed to hire a boat with two men, and row up 
to our destination. We walked along the narrow 
strip of shore below the rocks till we came to 
calm deep water, and there embarked in a prim- 
itive-looking boat which proved very frail and 
unsteady. This was my first experience of boating 
on a Norwegian Fjord, and I am free to confess 
that I felt more the danger than the romance of 
it. Huge precipices rose perpendicularly from 
the fathomless water on both sides, so that there 
was no shore, and no possibility of escape if any- 
thing happened to the boat. 

For four miles the naked rocks, which assumed 
the most fantastic shapes, in one place looking 
like an enormous organ, and in another like a 
section of the Coliseum on a vast scale, literally 
overhung the water, with torrents falling over them 
in all directions in sheets of foam. Repeatedly 
the cliffs came close together and imprisoned us 
within their grim walls, from which there was 
apparently no outlet ; but as we advanced they 
opened up as if purposely to make way for us. 
Above on the sky-line the sun glowed with dazzling 
brilliancy ; but far down, when we were close in 
beside the precipices, there was a peculiar green 
atmosphere, caused by the reflection of the light 
from the water, and the lights and shadows that 
flickered on the rocks as we passed were ex- 
ceedingly strange and beautiful. In several 
places the rocks had fallen into the water, forming 



278 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

slopes of debris^ on which there was a scanty 
covering of grass ; and high up on these steep 
slippery spots where it seemed difficult even for a 
goat to stand, we saw and hailed groups of hay- 
makers who had come there by boat to gather a 
scanty harvest of grass for the . long winter. 
Along the sides of the precipices, the telegraph 
wires were nailed to the rocks ; there being no 
space for poles. It was altogether a scene of 
wonderful grandeur and desolation utterly re- 
mote from the ordinary world of human associa- 
tions and interests. It abounds in legends of the 
wildest character. It is the haunt of the mon- 
strous Kraken^ of which good Bishop Pontoppidan 
of Bergen has given such a quaint description, 
and of the Nisse and other water-spirits which 
have the power of raising storms and causing 
shipwrecks, and invest the whole region with a 
nameless superstitious terror. 

After two hours of hard rowing, we came to 
the village of Bolstadoren, a favourite watering- 
place to which the Bergen merchants and their 
families come early in the summer and make the 
fjord gay with picnics and boating parties. Shut 
in by romantic precipitous rocks on every side, 
it is well-sheltered and richly-wooded, and enjoys 
an exceptionally fine climate ; while its rich green 
fields and clumps of soft deciduous trees, make it 
quite an oasis of beauty in the frightful wilderness 
of rocks and waters around. Here we rested for 
an hour and got scanty refreshment at the miser- 



iv.] EV ANGER. 279 

able station-house. Walking along the lofty banks 
of the deep and rapid Rundals Elv, we passed 
several Englishmen carrying the heavy spoils of 
their salmon-fishing, for which the river is re- 
nowned, and came to another lake which we had 
to cross in a boat, as its sides, like those of the 
Bolstadoren fjord, were perfect precipices, leaving no 
room for a path along the shore. In many places 
the rocks were clothed with magnificent forests ; 
in others they opened and revealed interior slopes 
of the richest green and charming woodland nooks 
among glistening birch trees ; while on the cultivated 
slopes of debris here and there red farm-houses 
hung at a . perilously steep angle, as if a ruder 
winter storm than ordinary might sweep them 
down into the lake. We landed at Evanger, where 
we were told that we could not get horses or 
carrioles as the last had just gone on with a party 
to Vossevangen. We saw that this was a cunning 
device of the landlord to detain us at his inn over 
the Sunday ; so we insisted upon our right to be 
sent on our journey. After a good deal of stormy 
discussion and delay, we were allowed to depart ; 
but the landlord in revenge gave us the sorriest 
vehicles and horses he had. My conveyance was 
a rough cart used for carrying stones, with a still 
rougher board put across for a seat, which con- 
stantly slipped from its place and gave me no 
end of annoyance. I put an air cushion upon 
it to soften its asperities, but in vain. Such " a 
shattering of the joints and churning of the viscera" 



280 



HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. 



[chap. 



I had never felt before. I greatly enjoyed notwith- 
standing the wonderfully lovely country through 
which we passed, with its splendid woods of pine 
and fir, its green meadows and cultivated corn- 
fields, its passing gleams of waterfalls, its chains 
of bright blue lakes below, and its, high snow- 
flecked mountains above, all rendered still lovelier 
by the tender mellowing of the warm evening 
light. The fields on either side of the road were 
covered with myriads of wild flowers of the richest 
bloom and loveliest colouring. I never saw before 
such an amazing luxuriance of bluebells, yellow 
bed-straws, wild pansies, and lychnis, of the largest 
size and most vivid hues ; chequering the rich 
green of the fields with delicious contrasts, and 
gleaming out from the blades of grass like tangled 
embroideries of sunshine woven through the her- 
bage by the shuttle of summer. The rocks were 
whitened with a rich variety of saxifrages ; wood- 
sias peeped out in tufts from every crevice and old 
wall ; and the ground in the fir woods was starred 
with countless hosts of Linnaea in full bloom. 
It was the richest floral feast I ever enjoyed ; the 
sight and the scent afforded a source of endless 
happiness all the way. The slanting rays of the 
setting sun brought out the colouring of the flowers 
with wonderful intensity ; the red and golden hues 
absolutely burned and glowed and became trans- 
parent in the transfiguring light like living jewels ; 
while the moist stillness of the evening air favoured 
the effusion of the exquisitely subtle fragrance of 



IV.] VOSSEVANGEN. 281 

the fields and woods. The twilight deepened into 
darkness, and at last the black spire of Vossevangen 
church stood out in dark relief against the moon- 
light, and we reached the door of Fleischer's Hotel 
at 12 o'clock very tired and glad to go bed. 

We spent a very quiet and refreshing Sunday in 
this beautifully situated village. The scenery around 
has been compared to that of Windermere; but the 
lake is lovelier and the entourage of mountains 
grander. A pastoral beauty and peace brooded 
over the landscape, which was exceedingly refresh- 
ing to mind and heart, wearied of the cold stony 
terror and the dark abysmal glooms of the Bol- 
stadoren Fjord and the Rundal's Elv, — suitable 
haunts for kelpies and rock-spirits and demons of 
the woods, but where human love could find no 
home in which to warm and shelter itself. Among 
the awful precipices and fathomless depths of the 
Fjord, Nature was everything and man nothing ; 
her works filled the horizon, and his were a far off 
memory. But here man's work filled all the fore- 
ground, and Nature's was the background and 
setting of the picture. The wild grandeur of the 
rocks and mountains was confined to the snow- 
fields that formed a ring around the horizon, and 
enhanced by contrast the restfulness and loveliness 
of the scene which they framed. The repose of 
the place entered into our being ; and our souls 
felt in harmony with the blessed day and the 
Edenic landscape. We attended the Lutheran 
service in the quaint old church — built in the 



282 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

twelfth century — which was crowded by the pea- 
sants from the surrounding districts. On the book- 
board of the pew before us was carved two rude 
initials and the date 1620 ; a more solemn and 
suggestive subject of reflection to us than the 
preacher's sermon, which we only partially under- 
stood. The effect of the groups of people, dressed 
in their brilliant and varied holiday costume wind- 
ing down the hillsides in the morning to the shore 
of the lake where the church was situated, and of 
the processions of boats rowing to the same desti- 
nation, crowded to the edge of the water, and 
making the surface of the lake opalescent with the 
reflection of their white and scarlet and yellow 
dresses, was exceedingly picturesque. Such an 
outbreak' of motion and colour amid the dreamy 
stillness and green monotony of the landscape, 
brought a reminiscence of some Oriental fete into 
this semi-arctic valley. In the afternoon, when 
seated at dinner, in a room which commanded a 
magnificent view, a sudden tempest sprang up 
almost without any warning ; the sky was covered 
in a few minutes from end to end with lurid clouds; 
the rain fell in torrents ; the waters of the lake 
were lashed by the furious wind into sheets of 
foam and wild spindrift ; and the reverberation 
of the crashing thunder was very grand as it died 
away among the hills. The tempest ceased as 
suddenly as it arose ; and the bosom of the lake 
brought down as if by magic the blue heavens to 
the earth and made them fairer than above ; while 



IV.] THE SHORE OF THE LAKE. 283 

the wet hillsides entangled among their moss-tufts 
and blades of herbage the bright threads of sun- 
shine, and covered themselves as with a sparkling 
robe of cloth of gold, and the fuller torrents filled 
the air with a confused murmur, having a silence 
in their tone, deepening the universal stillness. 
The elixir of the air after the storm was most 
exhilarating. Dissolved with the purest sunlight, it 
was perfectly transparent, made the most distant 
objects seem near and distinct, and gave to every 
sound a musical cadence. I spent the afternoon in 
a fine fir-wood on the shores of the lake, filled with 
the twin leaves and foamy flowers of the Smilacina 
like the ghost of the lily of the valley, and fragrant 
with the Linnsea. The lake imaging the blue- 
green foliage and the warm red trunks of the firs, 
was the poetry of the landscape, reflecting and 
idealizing its features ; and the snow-clad moun- 
tains on the horizon were the religion of the land- 
scape, lifting it up to heaven and clothing it with 
its transforming hues. Before Nature's Shechinah, 
I felt in that beautiful shrine the chastening power 
of loneliness, the awe of nature's mysteries, and 
drank refreshing draughts from living wells of 
thought springing up in every lifeless thing. That 
Sunday at Vossevangen, laid up in memory's cells, 
seems like some rare old wine to grow mellower 
and more satisfying by the keeping. Perhaps 
bright hope has made remembrance brighter, as 
the sun that shines before our path makes the 
clouds behind more lovely. 



284 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

On Monday we proceeded by carriole to Eide 
through a richly wooded country, varied by rocky 
glens, numerous high waterfalls, and several lovely 
lakes. The road in one place descends a great 
height into a deep valley by a series of admirably 
constructed zig-zags, blasted here and there in the 
face of the rock. We drove down this steep incline 
at full speed, the occupants of the last carrioles 
looking down upon those of the first, careering 
past immediately below them. The frequent 
rapid turnings were very exciting. At one part 
the road was carried over a substantial bridge 
which separated between two very picturesque 
birch-shaded waterfalls ; the one streaming down 
the rocks above the road, and the other falling in a 
series of steep rapids below. Skirting the beauti- 
ful Vasenderi lake by a path cut out of its preci- 
pitous shores and overhanging the deep water, we 
passed through very fine scenery to Eide, where 
we got our first glimpse of the Hardanger Fjord. 
Hiring a large boat at the station-house, we row T ed 
across the fjord, here about six miles broad, to 
Utne, where we lodged all night. The station 
here is one of the best-known and most frequented 
on the Hardanger, on account of the excellence of 
its accommodation and the reasonableness of its 
charges. We were greatly charmed by the kind- 
ness of the station-keeper's wife, a very comely and 
motherly looking old lady, dressed with scrupulous 
neatness and cleanliness, in the picturesque cos- 
tume of the district. Utne is a convenient centre 



IV.] VIEW FROM EIDE. 285 

for many most interesting excursions ; being situ- 
ated at the foot of the promontory of the Folge- 
fond range, which divides the branch of the Sor 
Fjord from the main stem of the Hardanger. From 
the heights above the station-house, to which we 
climbed up in the evening, we had a most mag- 
nificent view of the broad fjord, surrounded by an 
extensive amphitheatre of dark mountains ascend- 
ing straight up from the water's edge to the clouds, 
and cloven by waterfalls, that reached from their 
summits to the sea in one long continuous line of 
snowy whiteness. Here and there remoter moun- 
tains opened up behind these ; and in the recesses 
between them we caught glimpses of other lofty 
waterfalls that fell in graceful masses of foam from 
projecting rocks into the depths of unknown defiles. 
All round the horizon there were scores of such 
waterfalls. Subdued into silence and rest by the 
distance, they nevertheless lent a wild animation 
to the scene, and excited a tumultuous flow of 
emotions in our minds. 

Next day we embarked on board the Vikingen, 
a steamer employed in the postal service on the 
Hardanger. After penetrating to the extremities 
of three narrow branches of the fjord, we steamed 
down the Sor Fjord in the evening. The Alpine 
scenery of this arm of the sea is grand in the ex- 
treme. The snow and ice of the Folgefond on our 
right looked indescribably wild, breaking through 
dark mists and clouds, and gleaming ghostly white 
in the darkening twilight. At Odde, a small village 



286 HO LID A YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

at the head of the fjord, we remained for three 
days on short commons, in the house of a man 
whom we found afterwards was bankrupt. We 
visited during our stay the Skjeggedal-Foss, of 
which an account is given in the next chapter, 
and the Buerbrae lis, a small outfall of -ice on the 
east side, which descends from the enormous 
glacier-bearing fjeld of the Folgefond to within 
ioob feet of the sea, and is easily accessible by 
a land and water route of about seven miles from 
Odde. The ladies accompanied us on this last ex- 
cursion, which we most thoroughly enjoyed. The 
glacier was the loveliest I ever saw. It poured 
down in a tumultuous cascade of ice from the 
horizon into a deep valley, and was consequently 
very much broken up into crevasses, whose colour 
was of the most brilliant and transparent blue. 
There were no moraines at its side or foot ; and 
therefore the ice was not discoloured with mud 
like the glaciers of Switzerland. We stood at its 
extremity before a great wall of ice about fifty or 
sixty feet high, hollowed out into caves and fissures 
of the most intricate shape, and all shining with 
that lambent cerulean hue of which one never 
wearies. While gazing at it, I saw the vast solid 
mass distinctly moving, stones falling from its edge, 
and the ground wrinkling up before it, looking as 
if it had been newly ploughed. For hundreds of 
years the Folgefond glacier is said to have remained 
stationary, but it is most certainly advancing in one 
direction ; and the motion of the Buerbrae outfall 



IV.] BUERBRAE GLACIER. 287 

is a conclusive proof of this. A dense tangled 
thicket of birches and alders grew amid vast 
masses of rocky debris on the right side ; while 
blooming in contact with it I found the most 
brilliant and delicate flowers. Pansies, Alpine 
Ranunculuses, rich clusters of the lovely blue 
Alpine Veronica, cushions of glowing Silenes and 
white Saxifrages bloomed among the scanty herb- 
age, under the very drip of the glacier water ; 
summer and winter thus meeting together in a 
strange association. Among the crumbling ledges 
of the precipices overhead I gathered some stray 
specimens of Saxifraga rivularis, Ranunculus 
nivalis, Cerjastium trigynum, Kcenigia islandica, 
Braya alpina, and Phaca frigida, most of which 
are altogether unknown in the mountain flora of 
this country. A large stream issued from below 
the glacier, and ran down the valley from 
side to side, clay- coloured with the sediment 
ground by the motion of the ice over its rocky 
bed, which it deposited on the fields along its 
course. On our return we called at a saeter or 
farm-house about a mile below the glacier, where 
we were regaled with some clotted milk with 
cream, fladbrod and very fine fresh butter, served 
in a lordly dish. 

On the day we left Odde there were two couples 
married in the little church. The people were in 
a state of much excitement, a rare thing with these 
quiet Norwegians. Two processions of men and 
women dressed in their holiday attire, each carrying 



288 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

a tine painted red, containing provisions or 
presents for the young couples, marched into the 
village. Shortly afterwards we were invited by 
the KjogermesteV) or master of the ceremonies, to 
pay our respects to one of the brides. We found 
her standing in state, dressed in s,carlet gown 
and green jacket, with a gorgeous breastplate of 
particoloured beads and numerous silver ornaments. 
The famous bridal coronet of silver gilt, which none 
but the virtuous may wear, and which is handed 
down from generation to generation as one of the 
most precious heirlooms, was on her head ; while 
her hands were concealed under a folded white 
handkerchief which fell in front of her like an 
apron. She looked very shy and self-conscious, 
as the village maidens crowded round her to 
offer their congratulations. The bridegroom was a 
tall sunburnt farmer, dressed awkwardly in a blue 
jacket, black knee breeches and blue stockings 
ornamented with bright coloured ribbons, with 
large silver buckles in his shoes. Having given 
the bride a few small presents of useful toilet 
articles, a glass of currant wine was presented to 
us ; and immediately afterwards a large bowl of 
home-brewed beer was passed round, and all 
partook of it. A procession was then formed ; 
the bridegrooms accompanied by their friends 
marched hand in hand to the church ; while our 
party brought up the rear. The little church was 
crowded to suffocation during the ceremony which 
was somewhat long and tedious. When the ring 



iv.] ULLENSVANG. 289 

was put on, the priest clasped the joined hands of 
the bride and bridegroom in his own, and invoked 
upon them a solemn and touching benediction. 
At the close the young couple and their friends 
marched round the altar, each depositing upon it 
two small packets of money, one for the priest and 
the other for the clerk. The sum, which varies with 
the rank and wealth of the parties, was evidently a 
considerable one on this occasion ; and the priest 
pocketed his share with a quiet smile of satisfaction. 
We had the pleasure of the priest's company 
with us in the steamer, as we sailed in the after- 
noon up the Sor Fjord. He landed in a boat, 
along with . two of his daughters who had ac- 
companied him, at Ullensvang, where the principal 
church of the parish and the parsonage are situated. 
From the respect paid to him by all on board, and 
the hearty greeting which he received from the 
people on shore when he landed, he must be very 
popular in the district. Tall and stately, with an 
intellectual cast of countenance, and a venerable 
appearance, full of dignity and urbanity, he was a 
most favourable specimen of a Norwegian pastor. 
I cannot imagine a more delightful position than 
that of pastor of this lovely spot, which looked 
under the soft glow of the setting sun like another 
Eden. Its musical name is in harmony with the 
beauty of its scenery. To my mind it is the 
most charming of the many charming spots on 
the Hardanger. Situated on a flat verdant plot 
scooped out of dark brown mountains rising 

U 



290 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

precipitously behind, by the action of two torrents, 
the village had a setting of all the elements and 
colours that one could wish in a landscape. The rich 
umbrage of deciduous trees shaded its picturesque 
red houses ; and a tender shrubbery of lilac and 
laburnum embowered the parsonage in a perfect 
nest of flowers and foliage, to which the reflection of 
the fjord, as they drooped over its waters, gave an 
ideal charm. A line of white pebbles fringed the 
shore which the shallow green water laved with 
rich colorific effects ; and this was a feature so 
uncommon in Norwegian fjord-scenery, that, like 
the scent of May blossom, it placed us at once in 
the midst of familiar home-scenes with all their 
indescribable associations. Two splendid water- 
falls appeared in full view at opposite corners of 
the mountain recess behind the village, and im- 
parted the harmony of their ceaseless motion and 
music to the play of human life beneath. And 
to complete the scene, the eternal snows of the 
Folgefond range compacted by their own accumu- 
lating weight into a crystalline structure, shone on 
the horizon in front with an opaline lustre, like an 
emanation from an interior source of light, rather 
than the reflection of the sunset rays ; the highest 
earthly of the landscape thus purified into and 
mingling with the heavenly. The spot completely 
retired from the great world, seemed made for 
meditation ; there the spirit of the universe mani- 
fested itself in fairest forms and* colours and sounds 
to the eye and soul of man. 



IV.] THE N&RODAL. 291 

Going back on our former course to Vosse- 
vangen, we started from thence next day at two 
o'clock in the afternoon for Gudvangen, at the 
head of the Sogne Fjord, a distance of about 
fifty miles, over a wild upland country not unlike 
the lake district of England in some parts. The 
day was far advanced when we began to descend 
the wonderful series of zig-zags — twenty-six in 
number — down which, by an admirable feat of 
engineering, the steep road of the Stalheim-cleft is 
carried for 1500 feet. On one side the stream, 
which we had been following for some time, fell 
in a single leap 750 feet; while on the other 
side, a second stream, issuing from an unseen 
defile, flung its masses of foam from nearly an 
equal height. As we rounded the corners of the 
road, we had an alternate glimpse of these mag- 
nificent waterfalls. When we reached the bottom, 
we found ourselves in a tremendous gorge ; and an 
enormous cone of grey felspar, without a particle 
of vegetation on its inaccessible sides — called 
Jordalsnyt — towered up for 4000 feet, and like a 
giant turned to stone, seemed to shut up the 
pass behind us. Lofty waterfalls streamed down 
the bare precipices at frequent intervals ; while 
a river of the most exquisite translucent azure 
flowed rapidly by our side, lined with alder and 
birch trees. The bed of the gorge was heaped 
with fragments of rock, which had fallen from the 
cliffs, giving to us an unpleasant feeling of inse- 
curity, as we drove rapidly along under the awful 

U % 



292 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

walls, whose summit far up on the sky-line we 
craned our necks often in vain to see. In the 
vague uncertain light of evening, and with imagi- 
nations excited by the gigantic scenery, the faces 
and outlines of the cliffs seemed like sphinxes and 
monstrous primeval reptiles. Great eyes glared at 
us from the rocks. All the gods of the Scandina- 
vian mythology seemed to be embodied in the 
shapes which the precipices assumed. I shall 
never forget that twilight drive through the Nse- 
rodal as long as I live. No scenery ever pro- 
duced such a profound and lasting impression 
upon my mind. There is, I believe, only one 
valley in the Old World, which for depth and 
sublimity can equal it, viz. the Pass of the 
Taurus in Asia Minor, leading from Cappadocia 
into Cilicia ; and only one valley in the New 
World — the amazing defile of the Yo-Semite, in 
California. It was late at night, and quite dark, 
when we arrived at Gudvangen ; and there we 
remained over the Sunday. When lying in bed, 
I could see from my pillow the long vapoury scarf 
of the Keel-foss, a waterfall upwards of iooo feet 
high, on the precipice opposite the station-house, 
swaying in the breeze, and burnished with the ghostly 
moonshine. I climbed up the precipices in front 
of the inn, until my further progress was arrested 
at a height of 2000 feet by a huge wreath of snow, 
out of whose arched extremity a muddy stream 
issued with arrowy swiftness. Above this spot the 
rocks rose for another 3000 feet, tier above tier, 



IV.] PLANTS OF THE N^RODAL. 293 

each sheer as the plummet without a visible break, 
until the last seemed the very battlement of 
heaven. The flowers growing on the grey naked 
slopes, watered by the melting of the snows, were 
brilliant beyond human gardening — in shades of 
rose, blue, yellow, or the compromised tints. 

In the afternoon I walked up the gorge, and 
gathered abundance of Woodsia ilvensis and Cys- 
topteris montana by the wayside. On the large 
boulders beside the river, I found dense, soft, wide- 
spreading cushions of the Jungermannia setiformis 
var a. Lapponica^ whose golden green colour was 
exceedingly rich and beautiful. Only the variety 
/3. Britannica has been found very rarely in this 
country, on" the elevated mountains of Cairngorm 
and Clova. It was exceedingly abundant in the 
Nserodal, and clothed nearly all the fallen rocks. 
In company with it, and often spreading over its 
tufts in broken segments or orbicular patches, was 
the exceedingly rare lichen the Parmelia diatrypa^ 
whose singularly neat thallus is divided into linear 
inflated segments. It is very like the common 
P. physodes^ so abundant on pine trees in subalpine 
woods ; but it is distinguished by its rich cream 
colour, its polished or waxy appearance, and, above 
all, by its curious black dots or punctures on the 
segments. In this country it has been found by 
Turner at the foot of Snowdon, and by Dr. Greville 
and Hooker at Ballacheulish. Various other rare 
and interesting mosses rewarded my search on 
the banks of the river, such as Hypnum riigidosum> 



294 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

lying upon the ground in dense tufts of a yellow- 
brown colour, and the Hypnum sarmentosuin^ grow- 
ing in rich chocolate coloured masses in the boggy 
places ; both of which I had previously gathered 
at great elevations on the Breadalbane mountains. 
The ostrich-plume feather-moss, H. Crista-castren- 
sts, grew in profusion on the knolls along with its 
graceful associate the Linncea^ to whose rosy bells 
it* lent an additional attraction. 

The walls of the gorge were so high that the direct 
rays of the sun were excluded, except for a short time 
in the middle of the day, so that a kind of twilight re- 
flection reigned around, giving to everything a cold 
grey cheerless look. The potato crops, and even 
the grassy meadows, looked pale and sickly ; while 
the complexion of the people had a peculiar tallowy 
or etiolated appearance. With something of the 
feeling of an Arctic explorer after the long night 
of winter, I welcomed on the second day a glorious 
burst of sunshine that flashed into the gorge when 
the sun was overhead, and illumined it from end to 
end with a wonderful play of colour and chiaroscuro. 
The river turned into sapphire, and the meadows 
into chrysoprase, beautiful enough to have formed 
the foundations of the Apocalyptic heaven. In 
such a spot sun-worship seemed almost natural. 
On Monday afternoon we rowed to the steamer 
Framnaes, out in the offing, in a small boat which 
was nearly filled and upset by a sudden squall, 
rushing down the gorge like a funnel, and tossing 
the surface of the fjord into spray. In a perfect 



IV.] SOGNE FJORD. 295 

deluge of rain we steamed down the Gudvangen 
Fjord, beneath a continuation of the awful precipices 
of the Nserodal. The scenery utterly defies de- 
scription. The wildest part of the Lake of Lucerne 
cannot even be compared with it. In a kind of 
bewilderment and ecstasy such as I never before 
experienced, I saw precipice after precipice, snow- 
peak after snow-peak, emerging from the clouds, 
each higher than the other — the last vanishing a 
mile in sheer perpendicular height behind the sky 
line. The stillness here is as of death, and the gloom 
as of Acheron. Even the waterfalls tumbled down 
from the vast heights in silence, as if spell-bound 
by the enchantment of the place. Out of this 
stupendous propylaeum of nature we emerged into 
the wide channel of the Sogne Fjord, with a feeling 
as if coming out of a vault into open daylight. 
The awe and gloom on our spirits melted away 
under the smile of the broad blue sky, and the 
calm blessing of the unfettered sunshine. The 
shores diminishing in grandeur became homelier 
in character, and gave way here and there, and 
revealed glimpses of villages famous as the scenes 
of Frithiof s Sagas, and tall Bauta stones marking 
the sites of graves and battlefields celebrated in 
Norwegian history and mythology. 

Man with his passions, struggles and perplex- 
ities, plays but a small part in the scenery of 
Norway. He is dwarfed and subdued in the 
presence of the vast and impressive masses of 
mountain and rock by which he is surrounded. 



296 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

The centre of human interests is altogether lost 
in the wildness of the natural objects amid 
which it moves. Other mountainous countries 
such as Greece, and Palestine and Scotland, are 
full of historic memories ; and the grandeur of 
nature is hallowed by the higher fame of what 
man has done and suffered. But the greater part 
of the scenery of Norway is destitute of all interest 
from human story ; it has no memories save those 
Palaeozoic runes which the changes of nature 
have written upon its rocks. But in this part of 
the Sogne Fjord, nature is humanized so to speak 
by ancient associations. This is the classic-ground 
of Norway. The shores speak of the heroic times 
of Baldur and Frithiof, and the romantic age of 
Sigurd Jorsalafare, who led the ancestors of the 
present inhabitants of the district to fight with the 
Moors in Portugal, and to swell the ranks of the 
Crusaders under Baldwin in Palestine ; returning 
home by Constantinople and Germany, laden with 
the booty of Sidon, and many an eastern battle — the 
relics of which may still be seen in some of their 
houses and churches. In the evening we passed 
the mouth of the northern arm of the Fjord, which 
strikes into the heart of the wildest and loneliest 
region in Norway. We had a glimpse in sailing 
past of the magnificent Justedal glaciers hanging 
ghostly in the hollows of the snow-peaks of the 
horizon, " the awful white teeth of the Horungerne 
mountains fiercely set against the Polar blasts." 
We then went to bed ; and for eighty miles the 



IV.] VOYAGE HOME. 297 

boat steamed down the Fjord while we slept, until 
in the morning we found ourselves when we awoke 
out of the Sogne and among the skerries on the 
coast. We arrived at Bergen at 12 o'clock; and 
from thence sailed next day in the Finmarken for 
300 miles down the coast, anchoring for the night 
off the town of Stavanger, and arriving on the 
second night at Christiansand. At this port we 
waited a day and a half for the arrival of the 
" Gnome " from Copenhagen ; and after a stormy 
and miserable voyage, which seemed so protracted 
that I several times imagined I had got by mistake 
on board a vessel bound for America, we landed 
at Leith in the afternoon of Monday the 29th of 
July. In every respect, save only that my botanical 
hopes were somewhat disappointed owing to the 
lateness of the summer vegetation and the hurry of 
travelling, our tour had been most successful and 
enjoyable. And now looking back upon it across 
an interval of several busy and eventful years, 
the memory of one of our party who since then 
has taken a longer journey into the land of the 
unsetting sun, and whose many gentle and noble 
qualities had endeared her to us, gives a touching 
interest to all its incidents and pictures, and em- 
balms them in our hearts with the tenderness and 
sacredness of sorrow. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SKJEGGEDAL-FOSS IN NORWAY. 

Some one has remarked that mountains present 
peculiar attractions to men, while women find in 
waterfalls something more congenial to their nature. 
This, like a great many other general statements, 
is probably too large an induction from the facts 
of the case. It is true that the membership of the 
"Alpine Club" has been confined exclusively to 
the male sex ; but, in districts favoured with a 
famous waterfall, it has not been found that the 
fair sex have monopolized the services of the local 
guide. Ever since the discovery in the present 
century of the picturesque in nature, both sexes 
seem to have shared indiscriminately the admir- 
ation which mountains and waterfalls call forth. 
If there be any preference shown by women, it is 
perhaps due to the fact that waterfalls are more 
accessible than mountains, and do not require for 
their cultivation specialties of dress and muscular 
development. Notwithstanding this, however, it 
seems to me that there is a measure of truth in 
the aphorism. I believe that the mountain does 






v.] WATERFALLS IN GENERAL. 299 

harmonize more with the masculine than with 
the feminine character. Its ruggedness, solidity, 
heightj and changelessness symbolize peculiarly 
manly qualities ; while the toil, patience, and 
endurance needed in its ascent are exercises in 
which man delights. It appeals in its form and 
associations to his sense of power and self-reliance. 
The waterfall, on the other hand, speaks more to 
the gentleness and softness of the feminine nature. 
It is moulded by the form of the rocks and by the 
play of the winds, and it yields itself gracefully to 
the influences of its circumstances. * The continuous 
murmur and fall of the snow-white water; the 
unity and variety of the forms which it presents; 
the quick play of light and shade on its surface ; 
the rainbow that opens its blossom of light amid 
its spray ; the tender and graceful vegetation 
which its perpetual moisture nourishes around it, 
from the aspen that trembles to its shout, and the 
birch that hangs its tresses in its foam, to the moss 
that cushions the ledges of its rocks, and the lichen 
that makes its cliffs hoary : all these features of 
the waterfall appeal to qualities that are more 
often found in woman than in man. 

Waterfalls, however, are very varied. Some are 
quite as masculine in their character as mountains. 
They have no soft and graceful surroundings. 
They do not hide themselves in the loneliest 
recesses of glens, protected by cliffs and shaded 
by foliage ; but leap in the open light of day, in 
straight lines, from the brink of naked precipices. 



300 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Grandeur and sublimity are their sole charac- 
teristics. In proportion to their height and volume, 
they lose their picturesqueness and beauty ; and 
appeal to another order of feelings in the human 
breast. This is especially true of the Norwegian 
waterfalls. They possess grandeur, but not beauty. 
Owing to the peculiar formation of the country, 
it is rare to find that gradual sloping of the 
stfeam, and that succession of leaps, fringed with 
trees and shrubs, which contribute so much to 
the picturesqueness of a waterfall. The mountains 
are immense tablelands or plateaus, terminating 
abruptly on both sides in lofty mural precipices. 
Consequently the streams that are formed on them 
from the melting of the snows in summer, after 
running a short course, fall sheer down into the 
glen or the fjord ; whereas in this country or in 
Switzerland the mountains are constructed, not in 
the embattled style, but on the ridge and furrow 
principle, and slope gently into the valleys, so 
that the streams that gather in their bosom flow 
gradually down, increase as they flow, and form a 
succession of waterfalls, according as they meet 
with rocks in their course. The waterfalls of 
Norway are thus necessarily higher than those of 
any other part of Europe ; but they want the 
fringing of woods and the concealment of pic- 
turesque rocks peculiar to more gradual falls. 

Waterfalls are also more numerous in Norway 
than they are anywhere else. "The mountains," 
to use the expressive language of a Belgian 



v.] NORWEGIAN WATERFALLS. 301 

tourist whom I met at Utne, " are peopled with 
them." They lend animation to every scene, and 
hang from every cliff their scarf of liquid drapery. 
Hundreds of cascades unknown to fame, though 
far higher and grander than the Marbore fall at 
Gavarnie, in the Pyrenees, or the too celebrated 
Staubbach in Switzerland, may be seen in the 
course of a single day's journey in the interior. 
The Riukan-foss, or Reeking Fall, in Upper 
Telemarken, drops almost perpendicularly about 
800 feet into a gulf so filled with vapour that its 
bottom cannot be seen. The body of water is 
very considerable, being the overflowing of the 
Mioswasser, a lake thirty miles long and more than 
two miles broad. The Sarpen-foss is grander than 
the falls of Schaffhausen on the Rhine, being 
formed by the united waters of the Lougen and 
the Glommen, the two largest rivers in Norway, 
which drain the whole of the east side of the 
country for more than 300 miles. The height of 
the fall is eighty feet, and almost equals in volume 
of water the famous Trollhattan Fall, by which 
Lake Wenner in Sweden empties itself through the 
Gotha-Elv into the Cattegat. The most numerous 
as well as the finest waterfalls in Norway, however, 
are to be seen in the Hardanger district. In this 
region are the Rembiedals-foss and the Skyttie- 
foss — both very magnificent falls, though situated 
in remote out-of-the-way glens, and therefore 
visited by few travellers. Here, too, is the better- 
known Ostud-foss, which falls into the depths of 



302 HO LID A YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the Steindal valley, not far from the station- 
house of Vikor. It pours over its rock certainly 
more water than "a gill in a minute;" but, like 
Southey's "Force of Lodore," it is very dis- 
appointing to the eager visitor, except in very 
wet weather, or immediately after the melting of 
the snows on the hills. But by far the most 
celebrated of the waterfalls of the Hardanger is 
the Voring-foss, said indeed to be the grandest 
cataract in Europe, and the lion of Norway. Its 
height is upwards of 900 feet, and its volume of 
water fully larger than that of the Handek in 
Switzerland. A Frenchman on one occasion was 
so excited at the thought of visiting it, that even 
when his steamer entered the Hardanger Fjord, 
nearly a hundred miles distant, he broke out in a 
transport of enthusiasm, " I am coming near it ; 
I am coming near ; for thirty year I dream of 
Voring-foss." The spectacle is indeed grand be- 
yond description ; but it labours under the great 
disadvantage that it cannot be seen from below. 
I believe that one or two daring cragsmen suc- 
ceeded in getting pretty near the foot of it ; 
but their view of the waterfall was greatly ob- 
structed by a projecting rock. The ordinary 
tourist sees it from the edge of a great precipice 
at a considerable height above the top of the 
fall. Keeping a firm hold of the guide's hand — 
if you have sufficient nerve and are not oppressed 
with giddiness — you can bend your body half over, 
and look down into the awful abyss filled with 



V.] VORING FOSS. 303 

seething waters and blinding mists. A vision of 
a great white mass of foam falling, minute after 
minute, pausing as it were at intervals in mid-air, 
but still falling down, down, far out of sight into 
the bowels of the earth, with a roar that seems 
to shake the rocks to their foundations, is caught 
during the frenzied gaze and photographed upon 
the memory for ever. Woe betide the unhappy 
tourist who is seized with nightmare the first time 
he goes to sleep after having stood on this giddy 
height ! 

Within the last few years a waterfall has been 
known to the tourist-world which promises to rival 
the Voring-foss. The Skjeggedal-foss — for such 
is its jaw-breaking name — is not nearly so high ; 
but the body of water is larger, the scenery is 
more savage, and it can be approached quite 
close and seen in all its grandeur from the foot. 
Opinions are very much divided regarding the 
claim of each to pre-eminence. Very few have 
visited the Skjeggedal-foss ; and therefore the 
notices of it are exceedingly scanty. In the 
"Dag-boks" at Vossevangen and Odde I found 
it praised by one in the most extravagant terms 
as decidedly the finest waterfall in Norway, while 
another entry was to this effect : " The Skjeggedal- 
foss should be seen before and not after the Voring- 
foss." 

When at Odde, as mentioned in the preceding 
chapter — the nearest starting-point for the Skjeg- 
gedal-foss — I determined to judge for myself 



304 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

regarding the merit of this cascade. Accordingly, 
accompanied by a friend, I set out on Wednesday 
the 17th July, at seven o'clock in the morning. 
We secured the services of Lars Olsen, a native 
of Odde, who discharged the duties of guide 
throughout the day in the most admirable manner, 
and whom we have therefore much pleasure in 
recommending to future travellers. There was 
all the interest and excitement of discovery about 
our adventure. The morning was all that could 
be desired. A few clouds threatened at first to 
discharge their watery burdens, but they soon 
passed off, and the sun shone brightly in a blue 
and unclouded sky. We laid in a comfortable 
stock of provisions, as the excursion, we were 
told, would occupy the whole day. Two smart 
tourists from Scotland recorded the fact that they 
had done it in eight hours, but sensible men who 
were not walking for a wager, and who preferred 
enjoying scenery to doing it under steam-pressure, 
gave their evidence that it could not be managed 
in less than twelve or fourteen. The latter verdict 
we found from our own experience to be the true 
one. We brought with us waterproofs on account 
of the lowering appearance of the sky at starting, 
but we found them very serviceable afterwards, 
enabling us to approach nearer the waterfall than 
we could otherwise have done, without being 
drenched by the spray. Lars had his provender 
carefully rolled up in a coloured pocket-handker- 
chief. It consisted of about six square feet of 



v.] FOLGEFOND GLACIER. 305 

Jiadbrod — a kind of very thin barley-scone — and 
a small piece of raw mutton dried into the hardness 
and colour of a mahogany slab, and needing no 
further cooking. 

Stepping at the quay into one of those rickety 
Norwegian boats, sharp at both ends, which are so 
alarming at first to timid sailors, we rowed up the 
fjord for about four miles. The sea here is very 
narrow, and the banks on both sides are very 
steep and lofty. At the foot of the left bank are 
green patches of cultivated land here and there, 
and clusters of picturesque red wooden houses ; 
in the higher region pines and birches fringe the 
ledges of the rocks ; while on the sky-line the 
great glacier of the Folgefond shows its white 
teeth in every hollow between the cliffs. In some 
places the glacier was suspended over the edge 
of a precipitous rock far up in the air, and one 
felt afraid in passing underneath lest the huge 
mass should be loosened and fall down with a 
mighty plunge into the fjord. Many of the houses 
look as if they lay directly in the path of the 
avalanches ; great talus -heaps of debris lying 
perilously close to them. The overhanging tongues 
of ice were very beautiful, being much crevassed, 
and showing in every wrinkle and hollow that 
marvellously vivid sapphire colour with which 
every glacier-student is familiar. Nothing could 
exceed the purity of the ice, or the stainless white- 
ness of the snow — in this respect presenting a 
striking contrast to the discoloured glaciers of 

X 



306 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Switzerland, whose dirty faces no amount of Alpine 
rain can wash clean. Some years ago, when the 
supply of ice in London was nearly exhausted, 
a ship was chartered to the Hardanger, and 
brought home a cargo of magnificent fragments 
of the Folgefond glacier. Though the experiment 
answered admirably in every way, I am not aware 
that it has been repeated. 

Calm and still as the morning was, we did not 
hear the tinkle of the bells of the lost seven 
parishes of Folgedalen, said to be buried on ac- 
count of their great wickedness under the ever- 
lasting snows of the Folgefond, and which many 
superstitious ears have heard on certain propitious 
days. This tradition is very similar to that of 
the Bliimlis Alp in Switzerland, and, like it, is 
evidently not altogether a myth. It tells of a 
change of climate, and of a gradual advancement 
of glaciers, overwhelming districts once fertile and 
inhabited, of which many traces may be seen in 
the physical appearances around. The right bank 
of the Sor Fjord is more precipitous than the left, 
though not so wild and Alpine-looking. Huge 
masses of broken rocks are piled above each other, 
like a Titanic battle-field, at the edge of the water. 
Bright green birches, with uncommonly white 
stems, are interspersed among them, and soften 
their harshness ; while high overhead the preci- 
pices form a gigantic wall, with a fringe of pine- 
trees gleaming along their ledges in the sunlight, 
like the spears of a celestial army. Little stream- 



v.] SKJEGGEDAL GORGE. 307 

lets on both sides flow down the rocky gullies in 
one long continuous line of foam from the clouds 
to the sea, and make a pleasant all-pervading 
murmur in the air. The water of the Hardanger 
Fjord in this place is of a deep green tint, and 
in the chart is marked as upwards of a thousand 
feet deep. There is no shelving shore, but the 
rocks go straight down into the profound depths. 

After two hours' rowing through this magnificent 
scenery, we came, on the right bank of the fjord, 
to the entrance of a wild gorge, through which 
flowed the foaming waters of the Skjeggedal 
torrent An enormous wall of rock rose up on 
the left side without ledge or break, destitute of 
the slightest tinge of verdure. On the other side 
the precipice was more sloping, and admitted here 
and there of a few clumps of birches and pines 
growing on its shelving sides. The mouth of the 
gorge was filled with great banks of debris brought 
down by the stream in the course of ages ; and 
on these, which were carefully cultivated, stood a 
small but very neat-looking hamlet, called Tys- 
sedal. The people were busy hay-making — gather- 
ing the natural grass, and piling it, to dry in the 
sun, on the upright framework of wood which is 
erected as a permanency in every hay-field in 
Norway. Two or three sunburnt girls, with green 
bodices, white sleeves, and unusually large pic- 
turesque-looking caps, were singing a wild Nor- 
wegian jodel^ while tossing about the hay. The 
position of this hamlet struck us as exceedingly 

X 2 



308 H OLID A YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

precarious. It seemed to fill up all the available 
space in the gorge, and it looked as if a storm 
of more than ordinary severity might have washed 
both houses and fields down into the sea. 

Crossing the foaming torrent, which for half a 
mile agitated the placid waters of the fjord, we 
moored our boat in a sheltered creek, and stepped 
on shore. As we entered the frowning portals of 
the gorge, leading to the great inner mystery of 
the waterfall, we had a feeling of strange awe, such 
as the Assyrians of old must have experienced 
when passing between the monstrous human- 
headed bulls that guarded the gates of their 
temples. Our course at first lay up the steep 
bank of the river on the right hand, through a 
fine wood of Scotch firs, whose great red trunks 
and rich green foliage would have done credit to 
any nobleman's park. The sun shone through the 
openings between the trees in bright belts of gold 
on the mossy sward, crowded with myriads of 
whortleberries, whose glossy leaves and clusters 
of white bells excited our admiration. I never saw 
such a quantity of the beautiful Linncza borealis — 
called by the Norwegians windgras — growing any- 
where as in this wood. Its modest pink blossoms 
covered every available space, and its rich fragrance 
pervaded all the air, producing, along with the 
resinous scent of the firs, a peculiarly delightful 
and exhilarating impression. Fine specimens of 
the Melampyrum sylvaticum^ with flowers larger 
and yellower than those of the same species in 



v.] PLANTS AT THE ENTRANCE. 309 

this country, bloomed on every side ; and as it 
is believed to be parasitical in its nature, its roots 
subsisting upon those of other plants, it would here 
find rich nourishment from the luxuriant vegeta- 
tion. Ferns abounded ; clusters of the tall Stru- 
thiopteris germanica^ lovely patches of the fragile 
Oak Fern, and, above all, large tufts of the Woodsia 
growing everywhere among the stones. This last 
fern, which in this country is only found in two or 
three remote localities among the loftiest moun- 
tains, is very common and abundant by the way- 
sides in many parts of Norway — indeed, as common 
almost as the Polypodium vulgare with us. Both 
forms — ilvensis and hyperborea — are distributed 
over the country, and occur with equal frequency. 
Mr. Backhouse of York discovered, in 1861, the 
W. glabella^ an exceedingly lovely and delicate 
little species, at Tromsoe, in latitude 69^°, at an 
elevation of 1000 feet, below a patch of perpetual 
snow, in company with Cystopteris alpina and 
Asplenium viride. This fern seems to be an 
American species. I have it from clefts of a cliff 
at Montmorency Falls, near Quebec. It was dis- 
covered in 1861 also, in the Tyrol, growing on 
dolomite, by Hausmann ; and in 1863, by Mr. 
Churchill, one of the authors of that charming 
book, "The Dolomite Mountains," in the Carnic 
Alps, from whom I received a specimen. There 
were also numerous anthills, formed of the dry 
needles of the fir, like those with which the tourist 
is familiar in the pine-woods of Braemar. Some 



310 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [CHAP. 

of these were of enormous dimensions, and their 
tenants were swarming in myriads on the outside, 
running up and down to warm themselves in the 
sunshine. A stick thrust into one of the hills 
smelt overpoweringly of formic acid. 

Gradually, as we passed through this enchanting 
wood, where everything was left to fall or grow in 
the wild yet graceful disorder of nature, the path 
became steeper and less defined. In some places 
it consisted only of a tree-trunk fixed along the 
sloping side of a granite rock by an iron bolt. Over 
this precarious footway we practised successfully a 
series of tight-rope performances. We were struck 
with the curious appearance of some of the nearer 
rocks, forming bands of thin, regular strata, lying 
over each other, exactly like the huge, unshapely 
slates on the roofs of Norwegian houses, or the 
armour-plate of a man-of-war, and covered with 
the black stains of a species of Lecidea. I forgot 
to jot down the fact at the time, but the rocks, 
I should suppose, belonged to the Laurentian for- 
mation, in which the Eozoon Canadense, the oldest 
known fossil, has been found. In colour and struc- 
ture they resembled the dark hypersthene rocks 
of Loch Corruisk in Skye, which peel away when 
weathered in the same laminar fashion. On emerg- 
ing from the wood, we found ourselves on a kind 
of plateau of bare rock, without a particle of 
vegetation — not even a lichen or a moss to tint 
its surface. It was perfectly smooth, having evi- 
dently been subjected to glacier action, and sloped 



v.] GLACIATED ROCKS. 311 

rapidly down at a perilous inclination for a few 
yards, terminating abruptly in a precipice. Across 
this steep slope the guide walked without a 
moment's hesitation, his flat shoes catching firm 
hold of any roughness in the rock. I followed 
mechanically, though not without considerable 
trepidation, for the soles of my boots were very 
thick and slippery, and I knew that if I lost my 
footing I could not recover it, but would be hurled 
with fearful momentum down the slope into the 
abyss. One shuddering glimpse I caught of a wild 
whirlpool of waters far below made my blood run 
cold ; and as in this case discretion was the better 
part of valour, I am not ashamed to own that I 
willingly submitted to "a spirit of infirmity," and 
crawled on all fours. To make matters still worse, 
we had to ascend, about the middle of the passage, 
to a higher stratum of sloping rock by means of a 
fir-trunk, with notches cut in the side of it for 
steps. I need hardly say that I breathed more 
freely and saw more grandeur in the scenery when 
we reached the other side of this dangerous roof. 
The pathway after this was along the edge of a 
precipice, but its terrors were concealed by a pro- 
fusion of trees and bushes. In a wider space, we 
came upon a man and his wife busy erecting a 
wooden hut from the materials on the spot. An 
axe was their only tool, and it was wonderful what 
a shapely framework they had constructed by its 
means, without any nails. We asked them what 
induced them to build a house in such a spot. It 



312 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

could not be a saeter or hill-farm, for there was no 
grass around, and no possibility of housing or feed- 
ing cattle on such a precipitous slope. The man 
replied that it was intended to be an inn — I sup- 
pose the " Hotel du Skjeggedal-foss." It seemed a 
very hopeless speculation in present circumstances, 
but it was an idea worthy of the genius that first 
thought of an inn on the top of Snowdon, on 
tfie Rififelhorn, or the St. Theodule Pass, and de- 
served from its very boldness and originality to 
succeed. 

We had now reached the highest point of the 
ascent, and were congratulating ourselves that all 
danger and cause of fear to weak nerves were past, 
when we came to a staircase that beat all structures 
of the kind I have ever seen. It descended for 
about twelve yards at an angle of some fifty-five 
degrees, and consisted of rough irregular steps pro- 
jecting an inch or two beyond each other. On the 
one side was a lofty wall of rock dripping wet, and 
covered with bright green mosses and gelatinous 
masses of vegetable growth, so that there was very 
little hold for the hands, while on the other there 
was a sheer precipice, and far below a raging torrent 
falling into a hideously black linn ; and from this 
danger there was nothing, not even the slightest 
handrail, to give one a feeling of security. It was 
a place to try the nerves even of a member of the 
Alpine Club. When we got safely to the bottom, 
we thought that we had accomplished a feat to be 
proud of all our days, but our vanity received 



v.] DESCENT OF STAIR. 313 

a severe shock when the guide, looking back upon 
the staircase, said in the most matter-of-fact voice, 
" Det er ond plads for kesten" (That is a bad place 
for horses). After all, we had only done what a 
quadruped was in the habit of doing ; though how 
a great long creature like a horse could manage to 
come down this break-neck place, with nothing to 
cling to, was a puzzle which I cannot yet under- 
stand. I can only say that I should like to see 
him at it. Astley might get a new idea from it. 
There is a kind of saeter, or hill-farm, farther up 
the gorge ; and its dairy produce, it seems, is 
strapped on a horse, and thus carried down to 
Odde, w T her-e it is sold for groceries and other need- 
ful articles, which are brought back in the same 
picturesque fashion. Of course, no one could ride 
on horseback along the path by which we had 
come, although we found an entry in the "dag- 
bok" at Odde, complaining bitterly that the inn- 
keeper had refused to give horses for the excursion 
to a lady and her husband ! We had previously 
seen in our carriole-travelling some of the remarkable 
feats of the Norwegian pony, but we had no idea 
he was capable of such an Alpine Club exploit as 
the descent of this staircase, and we vowed a vow 
on the spot that nothing would ever induce us to 
venture upon a path which a Norwegian pony 
could not traverse. We had now got over two 
very bad places, but of course we had to go back, 
and the thought of returning in the same way did 
not add much to our peace of mind or enjoyment 



314 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

of the scenery. It was the sword of Damocles 
suspended over our head. 

The descent from this staircase was very rapid, 
but it was over very rugged ground. We picked 
our way in and out among chaotic masses of large 
loose stones, evidently glacier ruins„ placed at 
every possible angle, but generally the sharpest 
side uppermost. At last we came unexpectedly 
upon a little oasis in the wilderness — a quiet nook 
of cultivated ground. The space here was wider, 
the rocks having retired to a greater distance, and 
allowed more of the blue sky to be seen, and the 
sun to shine down unobstructedly in all his warmth 
and golden splendour. This miracle of refreshing 
greenness and beauty was evidently the slowly- 
accumulated deposit of the denuding power of the 
stream. The soil, though light and shallow, yielded 
a fair crop of potatoes, and the grassy pastures 
were golden with buttercups, and sprinkled with 
white honey-sweet clover blossoms. A cluster of 
rude wooden houses stood on the spot amid clumps 
of graceful birches. A little tarn stretched out in 
front, into the head of which tumbled down an 
enormous body of foaming water from a consider- 
able height, while the other end of it, a little way 
down, discharged a powerful torrent that had to 
force its way through a very narrow passage in the 
rocks. In the struggle, the water presented a most 
lovely appearance, broken up and churned into 
snow-white billows tinged with the brightest ceru- 
lean hues, like the interior of glacier crevasses. 



v.] BLUE COLOUR OF WATER. 315 

It was a sight that had a terrible fascination about 
it, and from which it was most difficult to withdraw 
the eye. The bright blue colour of many of the 
rivers and streams of Norway is owing to the 
scattering of light by excessively minute foreign 
particles, ground from micaceous rocks by the 
action of glaciers and waterfalls, and kept sus- 
pended in the water by its turbulent motion. A 
quantity of this cerulean water in a stoppered 
bottle, placed in the convergent beams of an electric 
lamp, shows a cone of light traversing the liquid of 
an especially rich and pure blue colour ; whereas 
ordinary colourless water, optically homogeneous, 
would have transmitted the electric beam without 
disclosing its track. The colour of the Skjegge- 
dal torrent is owing to the same cause as the blue 
of the sky. Faraday mentions that a precipitate of 
gold may be so fine as to require a month to sink 
to the bottom of a bottle five inches high. In like 
manner the particles in the water of the Skjeggedal 
torrent must be so minute as to take a period of 
time correspondingly long to subside even in the 
calmest pools. As we were gazing, spell-bound, 
on the beautiful torrent, a strange specimen of 
humanity came up to us with a peculiar duck-like 
waddle. He was a young man apparently about 
eighteen years of age, blind and apparently idiotic. 
He had no chin, and his face had the strange bird- 
like look which we see in the hieroglyphic paint- 
ings of the Aztecs, or in South American an- 
tiquities. He was conscious of the presence of 



316 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

» ^ 

strangers, but as he gave no reply to some ques- 
tions that we put to him, we concluded that he 
was dumb also, and therefore we pitied his wretched 
condition in silence. I have, however, been told 
by a friend who visited the spot subsequently that 
the young man spoke very garrulously to him, was 
exceedingly inquisitive, and displayed no lack of 
intelligence. He seemed to me the strangest and 
most forlorn object I had ever seen. 

The house into which we entered was that of 
the bonder, or peasant proprietor, and was far 
superior to the others. The whole gorge of the 
Skjeggedal, eight miles in length, and I know not 
how many in breadth, belongs to this man as 
" udal-land," paying no acknowledgment, real or 
nominal, as a feu duty or reddendo, possessed con- 
sequently without charter, and subject to none of 
the burdens and casualties affecting land held by- 
feudal tenure. But as this property consists prin- 
cipally of rock and water, it is not very productive. 
There is a great supply of timber, however, and 
the quantity annually cut down and floated on the 
river to the Hardanger ought to yield him a com- 
fortable income. He informed us that he had nine 
milch cows, three horses, and twenty sheep, all 
finding a precarious subsistence on the grassy 
patches laid like green carpets on the sloping 
debris of the rocks. He had under him three or 
four married farm servants, holding cottages beside 
his own with a small portion of land, rent free, but 
under the obligation of working for him during 



v.] HOUSE OF BONDER. 317 

a certain number of days in the year. Our " bonnet 
laird," whose name was Jacob, had a wife and 
family of four small children, as shy as the ryper 
or ptarmigan of the fjelds. They were very unlike 
the inhabitants of a civilized world in look and 
dress, and so unaccustomed to visitors that on our 
appearance they fled and hid themselves behind the 
maternal wing. The gudewife — a very slatternly 
woman, with a patient, depressed face — offered us 
a cup full of rich milk. The room was, large, but 
very bare and cold. Its only furniture consisted 
of a curious cooking-stove, with Pompeian figures 
moulded in its iron sides, two rough bedsteads 
covered with reindeer skins, and a dairy press well 
filled with cheeses, butter, and bowls of milk. On 
the bed was a strange wooden dish, grotesquely 
carved, and painted in red, blue, and yellow, filled 
with a dark, muddy-looking liquor. This was a 
species of ale, prepared, instead of hops, with the 
leaves of a kind of ranunculus called peast^ growing 
in miry spots. It is said to possess very peculiar 
intoxicating qualities, inspiring those who drink it 
with extraordinary activity and contempt of danger, 
but leaving a reaction of profound lassitude and 
debility. Tradition points to this beverage as that 
used by the famous Berserkir to inspire them with 
fury when going on their marauding expeditions. 
Our friend the farmer took a hearty draught of it, 
and offered it to Lars, who very modestly touched 
it with his lips, after having first shaken hands 
with his host and hostess, as the manner of the 



318 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

Norwegians is when receiving any favour. It was 
offered to us hesitatingly, but we shook our heads. 
It looked such a disgusting mess, that nothing would 
induce us to try it ; and Lars assured us afterwards 
that it was as abominable to the taste as to the 
sight. We pitied the lot of these poor people, shut 
up in this wild dungeon among the rocks, far from 
their fellow-creatures, and isolated from all the 
refining and ennobling influences of civilization. 
The contrast between their winter and summer life 
must be very trying. In summer their occupations 
are exceedingly varied, owing to the absence of all 
division of labour ; and these are not shortened in 
this latitude by any interval of darkness ; conse- 
quently they have that recreation in change of 
labour, which is perhaps the greatest enjoyment of 
a working man. But to this excessively active 
period succeeds a long winter of nearly nine 
months, during most of which there are only a 
few hours of daylight, while the frequent storms, 
and paths made impassable by snow and ice, pre- 
vent all communication with their nearest neigh- 
bours for weeks together. At such times their 
sufferings from enforced idleness and ennui must 
be very great. Indeed it is astonishing, consider- 
ing the wild and gloomy character of the scenery, 
and the loneliness and monotony of their lives, 
that cases such as those of the wretched young 
man we met are not even more frequent. Scotch- 
men or Englishmen compelled to live in like cir- 
cumstances would infallibly go mad ; but the Nor- 



v.] OUR GUIDE. 319 

wegians are very patient and much-enduring, their 
tastes are simple, their wants few, and they have 
never known any other mode of life, so that 
custom reconciles them to what to us would be 
unendurable. 

At this stage Lars had to resign his office ; for 
the duty of conducting us to the waterfall now 
devolved upon the bonder. Going before us, there- 
fore, we followed him past the hamlet, through 
fields purple with bluebells and the largest and 
loveliest pansies, over a rough wooden bridge, under 
which thundered a foaming torrent, forming a fine 
waterfall among the rocks high on the left. Dressed 
in knee-breeches of well-worn reindeer-skin, we 
greatly admired the symmetry of his legs, and the 
firmness and precision of his tread. His were the 
very legs of a mountaineer, accustomed to footing 
it in the most precarious places. A row of large 
silver buttons — made out of old coins, with the 
image and superscription of Frederick of Denmark 
still upon them — adorned his blue woollen coat, so 
that he was change for two or three specie dollars 
at any time. He brought us to the boulder-strewn 
edge of the tarn, and, launching his boat, speedily 
ferried us across the troubled waters. We landed 
on a plot of peaty ground, covered with tufts of 
beautiful cross-leaved heather in full rosy bloom, 
and white with the large flowers of the Moltiboer^ 
or cloud-berry, which would afford many a deli- 
cious feast when the- rich orange fruit was ripe. 
Clambering up by the side of a craggy knoll, over 



320 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

which the aforesaid waterfall precipitated itself, — 
so smooth and transparent at the top, before it was 
churned into foam, that the rock underneath could 
be plainly seen, — we came to the edge of another 
lake, four miles in length, and about half a mile 
wide, called the Ringedal's Vand. It* is upwards of 
a thousand feet above the level of the Hardanger 
Fjord, and is surrounded on every side, except 
where it discharges itself in the cataract, by lofty 
rocks which rise perpendicularly from the water's 
edge to a height of between two and three thou- 
sand feet. In a few places only is there any sloping 
ground formed of the debris brought down by 
waterfalls on either side ; and such ground, covered 
with dwarf birches and bright green grass, formed 
a refreshing contrast to the dark frown of the 
barren rocks. I always looked out for such places, 
and had a feeling of relief when nearing them, for 
there at least I knew that I could scramble out and 
find a footing if anything happened to the rickety 
boat. Wherever there are any ledges or crevices 
in the precipices, there the hardy spruce and Scotch 
fir flourish. Hundreds of trees, with astonishing 
pertinacity, cling to the most fearful places, where 
there is hardly a particle of soil to nourish them ; 
and their gnarled roots, fully exposed, crawling 
over the bare rock, look like the talons of a bird of 
prey. When passing by, close to the shore, we 
saw the farmer's servants perched above us on a 
precipitous rock, cutting down a huge fir, or lopping 
off its branches, and squaring its trunk for the 



v.] RINGEDAUS VAND. 321 

market — their boat lying moored close by ; while, on 
a projecting crag over the cataract, others of them 
were pushing with a long pole into the current the 
logs that had got jammed together in the back 
water. Both occupations looked very perilous, but 
the men seemed cool, smoking their pipes, and 
hailing us with a very cheery "gud-dag." Lars 
and the farmer took an oar each, and rowed us 
across the current to the other side of the lake in 
alarming proximity to the edge of the waterfall. 
None but strong and practised boatmen could hold 
their own here, and keep the boat in the right 
place. The breaking of an oar would be fatal. 
The water was cold as ice, and very deep, between 
one and two hundred fathoms, the bonder assured 
us. Its colour was dark indigo blue, the colour of 
the ocean when deepest ; but in one or two places, 
where the depth decreased near a projecting pro- 
montory of boulders, it was of a rich green. Nothing 
could be more soft and tender than the gradations 
of this tint made by the water shoaling to the 
edge ; gleams of malachite and emerald vanishing 
in transparent aqua-marine, and strangely inter- 
spersed with cobalt hues from the darker depths. 
It was a miracle of colour such as would have 
astonished and delighted a painter's heart. 

Several waterfalls poured down the cliffs on 
either side, the finest of which was the Tysses- 
trengene. It was very peculiar, consisting of two 
distinct falls, formed by two torrents — separate, 
and yet blending strangely together. The one 

Y 



322 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

leapt down straight as a rod for three or four 
hundred feet, preserving its integrity to the bot- 
tom ; the other formed a curious curve ; and both 
disappeared in a dark chasm, from which issued a 
rainbow-wreathed cloud of spray. A great curtain 
of the purest snow hung over the brow of the rock 
where they both came in sight, and the blue of 
the sky above it was wonderfully quiet and intense 
from the contrast. Altogether there was some- 
thing so spirit-like and ethereal in the source and 
destiny of these twin waterfalls, issuing apparently 
from the same snow-wreath far up, and vanishing 
in the same rainbow-tinted cloud of spray, that we 
were quite lost in admiration of the sight, and 
thought this of itself a sufficient recompense of 
our excursion. On the banks of one of the twin- 
streams, a long way beyond the precipice, there is 
a mountain-farm, called Floren, whose ' loneliness 
and dreariness must be uncommon even in Norway. 
Another farther down is called Lia. How the 
inhabitants get out of the place and into com- 
munication with their nearest neighbours is to me 
incomprehensible. The path must be as dreadful 
as that of the "Dead Man's Ride" in Vettie-gial. 
Looking back, when we had advanced about a 
mile on the lake, the scene was truly extraordinary. 
The rocks had come together and closed up the 
entrance, so that we were surrounded on every 
side by vertical precipices, and there seemed no 
outlet. It required little exercise of imagination 
to picture ourselves the ghostly crew of Charon 



v.] DANTESQUE SCENERY. 323 

sailing over the Stygian pool. There was some- 
thing truly infernal in the look of the place, from 
which a warm human heart recoiled. Dante and 
Dore might have felt at home in it, but our tamer 
spirits craved for something less terrific and more 
earthly. The sun was shut out by the overhanging 
rocks, and the light was therefore dim and feeble. 
We were chilled to the marrow by the cold air of 
the water ; and when the clouds gathered, and a 
heavy shower fell, increasing the sublimity of the 
scene, the climax of our discomfort was reached. 
I would advise future visitors to take with them, 
for this part of the way, a plentiful supply of rugs, 
for the temperature, even on the hottest day, is 
like that of the Arctic regions. I know not if 
there be any superstitious legends connected with 
this fearful lake. If not, there should be ; for I 
cannot picture a more appropriate haunt for those 
strange beings, half human and half spiritual, 
which, according to the Northern mythology, infest 
the dark fathomless fjords, and require to be ap- 
peased every year by the drowning of one or more 
human victims. It seemed easy, in such a place, 
to understand how the wildest tales of spirits and 
monsters of the deep originated. It would be 
almost impossible to live in Norway and not be 
superstitious. The powers of nature are so terrible, 
and on so grand a scale, that they could not fail 
to be personified and invested with a dread control 
over human life. 

Turning the corner of a great dripping promon- 

Y 2 



324 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

tory that rose straight from the water into the 
clouds, like a castle of Thor, a sight burst upon 
us which for a minute or two nearly took away 
our breath. It was the Skjeggedal-foss at last! 
This first glimpse of it was one of those climaxes 
of life which contrast strangely with its usual tame- 
ness and monotony, and cause us to wonder at the 
suddenly revealed greatness of our being. There 
before us was the jealously-guarded secret of the 
gorge, of which every object all the way had been 
conscious — the fierce yet beautiful Pythoness of 
this inmost shrine of nature. As if by one consent 
the men paused upon their oars, and. we gazed in 
silence. To utter our admiration while that mighty 
tongue was pouring out its mystic secrets to the 
trembling rocks we felt would be sacrilege. All 
waterfalls have a strong family likeness, and should 
therefore be left to the imagination to sketch. 
This one, however, had some peculiar features. 
The body of water was enormous, and the height 
upwards of 600 feet. It fell sheer down from the 
edge of the precipice without touching the rock ; 
and though a great quantity of vapour was dis- 
engaged, the vast mass of its waters reached the 
bottom entire with a solid sound like the fall of a 
great avalanche. We were upwards of a mile 
from it, but even at this distance the noise was 
so penetrating, so transfixing, that the roll of 
thunder, or the firing of artillery, can give no 
idea of its fulness and solemnity. As we drew 
nearer the cataract increased in size and sublimity ; 



v.] THE WATERFALL, 325 

while the rocks literally overhung the water. The 
summits of those on the left were broken up into 
the most fantastic outlines — rude resemblances of 
monks, sphinxes, and castles, some of which were 
.half-detached and seemed ready to topple down. 
Great patches of snow lay wedged in the shady 
recesses, and increased the peculiarly grey weather- 
beaten look of the precipices. No more venerable 
rocks than these bold gigantic masses of gneiss and 
mica-schist can be found in the world. They are 
like exposed portions of the skeleton of the earth ; 
and one feels, in looking at them, the appropriate- 
ness of the title, " sEldgamle Rige? "primeval 
kingdom," given to their native country by the 
Norwegian poets. 

We landed on an extensive sloping bank lying 
along the foot of the rocks beside the waterfall. 
This bank was covered with straggling dwarf 
birches, and yielded a rich crop of grass wherever 
there was a clear space of soil among the great 
lichen-covered boulders. It was evidently a saeter, 
for there were two or three ruinous wooden sheds 
erected on it for storing hay until carried down 
by boat to the farm ; and several of those curious 
wooden frames for drying it were scattered about. 
In the shallow inlet where we moored our boat, 
the bottom was composed entirely of thin round 
pieces of mica-schist, all of the same size, and so 
like coins that we offered a handful of them play- 
fully to Lars as sma penge for ein mark. They 
had evidently been coined in the mint of the 



326 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

waterfall. I gathered several very rare lichens 
and mosses among the stones. Nothing could 
exceed the variety and richness of the flowers 
growing in the more sheltered places. It was a 
curious combination of plants which in this country , 
are never seen together. Lowland and Alpine 
species bloomed side by side without any incon- 
gruity. Bluebells, pansies, marsh-marigolds, lilies of 
the valley, ragged robins, displayed their familiar 
charms in loving sisterhood with the shiest beauties 
which in Britain are found only in one or two 
isolated spots among the loftiest Highland moun- 
tains. Ajuga alpina^ Bartsia alpina^ Salix reticu- 
lata and herbacea^ Pedicularis lapponica, Cornus 
suecica^ Rubus arcticus^ Srnilacina bifolia, Saxifraga 
cernua and rivularis y Thalictrum alpinum, Pingui- 
cula villosa, Sonchus alpinus, Cerastium alpinum, 
Ranunculus glacialis, Hierochloe borealis, Phleum 
alpinum ; these and many more Alpine plants, 
exceedingly rare in Britain, were gathered on this 
little plot of ground. flere, as on the summits of 
the Highland mountains, the Silene acaulis formed 
great soft carpets on the mossy ground, with its 
tufted foliage hardly seen for the multitude of rosy 
blossoms. The wondrous loveliness of the large 
blue eyes of the Alpine Veronica — looking out 
upon me from behind the shelter of every stone 
— haunts me still. And high on the tops of the 
largest boulders the magnificent Saxifraga cotyledon 
waved its long rich spike of snowy blossoms in 
every gust of wind. It is well named Berg-kongen, 



v.] LINN BENEATH WATERFALL. 327 

"king of the rocks," for it is a truly royal plant. 
It recalled many a delightful memory of the Alps, 
where I gathered it among the grandest scenes. I 
could have spent a whole day botanizing in this 
rich habitat ; but as our time was limited, I was 
obliged to content myself with the species that 
came most readily to hand, leaving many a rare 
and beautiful plant "to blush unseen, and waste 
its sweetness on the desert air." 

Wrapped in our waterproofs, we climbed among 
the wet rocks, past the limits of vegetation, as near 
as we could venture to the edge of the abyss ; and 
there through a dense writhing mist of spray, which 
poured in streams from our garments, we caught a 
glimpse of a huge wreath of snow lining the sides 
of the caldron all round, which seems to be per- 
petual. Into the heart of this cloven wreath the 
cataract fell with an appalling sound, and from 
thence plunged down in a series of smaller falls 
into the lake. We could not see the nature of the 
linn beneath the cataract, for it was filled with 
blinding vapour, which rushed half-way up the 
sides of the black rocks and fell down again in 
Numberless cascades — which of themselves would 
have attracted admiration in any other place. 
High overhead on the sky-line the vast volume of 
water burst over the ledge of rock. We watched 
it descending, churned and ground by the con- 
cussion into the smallest atoms, and yet forming 
in their aggregate mass a snowy pillar of gigantic 
dimensions and irresistible strength. We lingered 



328 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. 

on the spot, loth to leave, fascinated by the inde- 
scribable wildness and terror of the sight ; and 
when we did go, we looked behind again and 
again, for the eye was not satisfied with seeing. 
We rowed safely back to the farm, where we had 
the rare luxury of paying a landed proprietor a 
sum equivalent to two shillings and sixpence of 
English money, and receiving in acknowledgment 
of our munificence a hearty shake of the hand and 
"mange tak" (many thanks). The steep staircase 
w T as ascended with less trepidation than it was 
descended ; and over the bare house-roof of rock 
we walked with greater boldness, in the erect 
attitude that becomes a man ; having, at the 
guide's suggestion, taken the precaution of putting 
off our shoes, and going across in our stockings. 
All the way as we descended we obtained through 
the trees magnificent views of the snowy plateau 
of the Folgefond, reddened on its highest part by 
the exquisite abend-gl'tihen y or afterglow of sunset. 
We reached Odde at eight o'clock, moderately 
fatigued and immensely gratified with our ex- 
cursion, but leaving the comparative merits of the 
Voring-foss and the Skjeggedal-foss an open ques- 
tion, to be settled for himself by each tourist who 
follows in our footsteps. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE PASS AND HOSPICE OF THE GREAT 
ST. BERNARD. 

THERE is no episode in continental travel more 
interesting at the time, and more suggestive of 
pleasing memories afterwards, than a visit to the 
Great St. Bernard Hospice. It does one moral as 
well as physical good. The imagination is stimu- 
lated by the associations of the place, and the 
heart filled with the feverish unrest and love of 
excitement so characteristic of the present age is 
rebuked and calmed by the loneliness and mono- 
tony of the life. Every one has heard of its dogs 
and monks, and its travellers rescued from the 
snow-storms. Pictures of it used to excite our 
wonder in the days of childhood ; descriptions of 
it in almost every Swiss tourist's book have inte- 
rested us in maturer years ; while not a few of us 
have made a pilgrimage to the spot, and thus given 
to the romantic dreams and fancies of early life a 
local habitation and a name. Still, trite and worn- 
out as the subject may appear, it is impossible by 
any amount of familiarity to divest it of its undying 



330 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

charm ; and those who have visited the scene, so 
far from their interest in it being exhausted, have 
only been made more enthusiastic in its favour, 
and more anxious to compare or contrast their 
own experience with that of every new traveller 
who writes upon it. To the botanist especially the 
region is exceedingly interesting. In ascending 
the pass he has an opportunity of noticing the 
va'rious types of vegetation that occur in the dif- 
ferent zones of altitude, from the plants of Southern 
Europe in the valleys to the Arctic flora below the 
line of perpetual snow. There are few places where 
so great a variety of Scandinavian forms may be 
gathered as on this crest of the Pennine Alps, 
growing among forms that are peculiar to the 
locality. Even the unscientific traveller is struck 
with their extreme luxuriance and beauty. They 
form an essential feature in the landscape, which 
the most careless will notice and remember with 
pleasure long afterwards, associating the beds of 
lovely Alpine plants with the fresh, bracing air, 
the bright rejoicing waters, and the noble pros- 
pects of the mountain heights. 

About the beginning of August, several years ago, 
I had the pleasure of visiting this celebrated spot 
in company with two friends. We set out early in 
the morning in a char-a-banc, or native droskey, 
drawn by a mule from the " Hotel Grande-Maison- 
Porte," at Martigny, the Roman Octodurus, and 
the seat of the ancient bishops of Valais. This is 
a low, damp, uninteresting place, much infested 



VI.] MARTIGNY. 331 

by a small, black gnat, whose sting is very 
painful, bred in the marshes of the Rhone. Being 
a capital centre of excursions to Lago Maggiore 
over the Simplon, to Aosta and Turin over the 
St. Bernard pass, and to Chamouni by the Tete- 
Noire, or the Col de Balme, it is exceedingly gay 
and animated every evening during the summer, 
owing to the arrival of tourists, and desolate and 
deserted every morning, owing to their departure. 
The sun was shining with almost tropical heat, 
rapidly ripening the walnuts along the avenues of 
the town, and the grapes hanging in rich profusion 
on the trellises of the houses ; the sky was without 
a cloud, and everything promised a delightful trip. 
Passing through a small unsavoury village called 
Martigny le Bourg, our route crossed the Dranse 
by a substantial bridge ; and at a little distance 
beyond a guide-post indicated to the right the way 
to Chamouni, and to the left to St. Bernard. The 
entrance by the pass of the Dranse is magnificent, 
reminding us, though on a grander scale, of the 
mouth of Glenlyon in Perthshire. Lofty slopes, 
and precipices richly wooded, approached from 
both sides so closely that there was hardly room 
left for the passage of the powerful stream, which, 
turbid with glacier mud, roared and foamed over 
enormous blocks of stone. The road, without para- 
pet or railing, overhung the river, and in one place 
was carried through a tunnel called the Gallerie 
Monaye^ upwards of two hundred feet long, cut out 
of the solid rock. We passed through scattered 



332 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

villages sweetly embosomed among walnut and 
chesnut trees, but presenting many saddening 
signs of the poverty and wretchedness of the 
inhabitants. An unusually large proportion of the 
people were afflicted with goitres, and here and 
there we saw sitting on the thresholds of their 
dirty chalets loathsome cretins, basking in the sun, 
whose short, shambling figures and unnaturally 
large round heads and leering faces afflicted us 
amid the beauty of nature around like a nightmare. 
The ground was everywhere most carefully culti- 
vated. Every particle of soil among the rocks, 
however scanty or steep, was terraced up with 
walls, and made to yield grass, corn, or potatoes. 
High up on the brink of precipices that seemed 
almost inaccessible, bright green spots indicated 
the laborious care of the peasantry ; and to these, 
as soon as the winter snows diappeared, sheep 
were carried up every year, one by one on men's 
backs, and left there till the end of summer, when 
they were carried down, considerably fattened, in 
the same picturesque fashion. The lower meadows 
by the roadside were exceedingly beautiful, of the 
most vivid green, covered with myriads of purple 
crocuses and scarlet vetches, and murmurous with 
the hum of innumerable grasshoppers. Gay butter- 
flies, and insects of golden and crimson hues, never 
seen in this country, flitted past in the warm sun- 
shine ; and the fragrance of the Arolla pines filled 
all the air with a highly stimulating aromatic balm. 
As it was the festal day of the " Assumption of the 



VI.] DEBACLE OF DRANSE. 333 

Virgin," one of the grandest fetes of the Roman 
Catholic Church, groups of peasants, — the men 
dressed in the brown cotton blouses peculiar to the 
district, and the women wearing a curious head- 
dress consisting of a broad tinselled ribbon plaited 
and set on edge round a cap, each carrying her 
prayer-book in her hand, wrapped in a white 
pocket-handkerchief, — passed us on their way to 
the chapel at Martigny. On all sides we noticed 
exceedingly distinct traces of two great natural 
phenomena which had overwhelmed the district, 
separated from each other by thousands of years. 
Almost every exposed rock was polished and 
striated by ancient glaciers ; and the granite 
boulders, which they had brought down with 
them, were seen perched upon the schist and 
limestone precipices hundreds of feet above the 
river. The whole valley from St. Bernard to Mar- 
tigny, with its tributary glens, must have been the 
channel of a vast system of glaciers descending 
from the crest of the Pennine Alps during the 
glacial epoch, when all the glaciers of Europe and 
Asia were far more extensive than they are now. 
The other phenomenon to which allusion has been 
made was also caused by glacier action, but of a 
different kind. In one of the narrow side gorges 
of the valley, called the Val de Bagne, there is 
a glacier known as the Glacier de Getroz, which 
hangs suspended over a cliff five hundred feet high. 
The end of this glacier is continually breaking off, 
and falling over the precipice into the bottom of 



334 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the gorge, where the fragments of ice accumulate 
and form enormous heaps. In the year 1818 these 
fallen masses had been piled up to an unparalleled 
extent, and choked up the narrow, vault-like outlet 
of the gorge. Behind this icy dam the water of 
the east branch of the Dranse increased, until at 
length a lake was formed, nearly a mile long, a 
quarter of a mile wide, and about two hundred 
feet deep. The inhabitants of the valley watched 
anxiously the gradual rise of the waters, knowing 
that when the warm season should come the icy 
bank would melt, and the reservoir be at once dis- 
charged. Many of them fled in the spring, with 
their goods and cattle, to the higher pasturages. 
A tunnel, seven hundred feet long, was cut into 
the ice, which gradually let off a considerable part 
of the water without any damage. But a hot June 
sun and the warmth of the water so gnawed into 
the ice that on the afternoon of the 16th of the 
month the barrier burst all at once, and a pro- 
digious mass of water, upwards of five hundred 
and thirty millions of cubic feet, rushed down the 
valley with fearful fury, carrying everything before 
it, and marking its course all the way to the Lake 
of Geneva, fifty miles distant, with gigantic ruins. 
Many lives were lost, and property to nearly the 
value of a million sterling was destroyed. To pre- 
vent a repetition of this awful calamity, for a simi- 
lar event occurred in 1595, and the same cause is 
still in operation, spring water is led by means of 
a long wooden trough to the dam of ice formed 



VI.] LI DDES. 335 

by the falling fragments of the glacier ; and the 
warmth of this water cuts like a saw the ice as 
soon as deposited, and thus cleaves a passage for 
the river and prevents its waters from accumu- 
lating. The autograph of this tremendous inun- 
dation was written, like the mystic " Mene, mene," 
of Belshazzar's palace, in the huge stones in the 
bed of the river, and in the gravelly and stony 
spots far up the sides of the valley, mingling with 
the relics of ancient glacier action, but easily dis- 
tinguishable from them. 

Passing through Sembranchier, a picturesque 
village, with the ruins of an enormous castle of the 
Emperor Sigismund on a hill in its vicinity, and 
Orsieres, situated at the junction of the valleys of 
Ferret and Entremont, distinguished by a very 
ancient tower rising high above its curious houses 
— the road ascended by a series of well-executed 
zig-zags through a rich and highly -cultivated 
country to Liddes. Deep down among wild rocks 
the Dranse pursued its turbulent course unseen, 
revealing its presence only by an all -pervading 
murmur in the air. The view extended over an 
undulating upland landscape of green fields, di- 
versified by wooden frames for drying the corn, 
somewhat like the curious structures for drying 
hay to be seen on Norwegian mountain farms. 
The huge summit of Mont Velan, 12,000 feet high, 
formed the most conspicuous object on the horizon 
before us, its dark rocks contrasting finely with 
its dazzling snows and the rich fields of deep blue 



336 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

sky above it. A cool breeze blew down upon us 
from the snowy heights, and was inexpressibly 
refreshing after the stifling heat of the valley. 
In fields by the roadside we saw quantities of a 
dwarf Delphinium or Lark's-spur, whose blossoms 
were of the loveliest and most brilliant blue colour. 
About four o'clock in the afternoon we came to 
a strange old village, called St. Pierre, — the last 
on the route, — situated on a kind of plateau, about 
5000 feet above the level of the sea. It was a very 
dirty, miserable place ; and we were victimized by 
the innkeeper of the Hotel au Dejeuner Napoleon, 
having been charged fifteen francs for a blue 
scraggy chicken, not much larger than a sparrow, 
a plate of potatoes fried in rancid grease, and a 
bottle of Beaujolais wine as sour as vinegar. A 
remarkably quaint old church, built in the tenth 
century, still exists in the village. A tablet with 
a Latin inscription by Bishop Hugo of Geneva, 
the founder of the church, commemorates a victory 
obtained by the inhabitants over the Saracens, 
who had ravaged the district with fire and sword. 
A Roman milestone is also built into the wall of 
the enclosure near the tower. In modern times 
the place is chiefly interesting as being one of 
the resting-places of Napoleon in his passage over 
the Alps, and the birthplace of his famous guide. 
A little beyond it there is a deep gorge with a 
splendid, full-bodied waterfall, which we visited. 
The sides of the pools and the sloping banks were 
fringed with clusters of tall monkshood, whose 



VI.] FOREST OF ST. PIERRE. 337 

blue flowers mingled with the snowy foam of the 
water ; while the large yellow flowers of the Swiss 
foxglove {Digitalis grandiflora) peeped out with 
a very brilliant effect among the bushes. Across 
the gorge, a frail bridge, with an arched gateway, 
constructed by Charlemagne, gave access to the 
main road, which led through the forest of St. 
Pierre in the Defile de Charreire, and was cut in 
many places out of the solid rock. Below us, at 
the foot of perpendicular precipices several hundred 
feet in depth, the Dranse, still a powerful stream, 
formed innumerable foaming cascades. There was 
no wall or abutment to protect us. The off-hand 
wheel of the conveyance was always within a foot 
of the edge. I was sitting on the side nearest the 
precipice, and often could have easily let fall a 
stone from my hand right down into the river. 
The least false movement on the part of the driver 
would inevitably have hurled us over to destruc- 
tion. And yet we went safely and pleasantly 
along at full speed, our hearts now and then, when 
we came to a more trying place than usual, per- 
haps a little higher than their normal position. 
It was in this defile of Charreire that Napoleon 
encountered his most formidable difficulties. The 
old road was declared by Marescat, chief of the 
engineers, as "barely passable for artillery." "It 
is possible! let us start then!" was the heroic 
reply of his master. It was a favourite maxim 
with him that wherever two men could set foot 
an army had the means of passing ; and he acted 

z 



338 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

upon that maxim on this occasion. As it was 
about the end of May, the snows were melting 
fast, and thus greatly increased the dangers and ' 
difficulties of the route. "The artillery carriages 
were taken to pieces and packed on mules ; the 
ammunition was also thus transported ; whilst the 
guns themselves, placed on the trunks of trees 
hollowed out, were dragged up by main strength, 
— a hundred soldiers being attached to each can- 
non, for which laborious undertaking they received 
the sum of 1200 francs. At the Hospice each 
soldier partook of the hospitality of the brethren." 

In about an hour and a half we came to a 
solitary inn, called the Cantine de Proz, kept by 
a man of the name of Dorset, who is very civil 
to travellers. No other dwelling was in sight. A 
number of diminutive cows wandered about on the 
short smooth turf, bright with the lovely Alpine 
clover ; the sweet tinkling of their bells, combined 
with the monotonous sighing of the infant Dranse, 
giving us a lonely and far-away feeling, as if we 
had reached the end of the world. A corner of 
the Glacier de Menouve, of dazzling whiteness, 
appeared in sight, far up among stern precipitous 
rocks, of a peculiarly bald and weather-worn ap- 
pearance. Above the cantine, a little plain, called 
the Plan de Proz, about 5500 feet above the sea, 
sloped up, seamed in every direction with grey 
watercourses, but gemmed with innumerable bril- 
liant clusters of the snowy gentian. Leaving our 
conveyance at the inn, and taking with us the 



VI.] DEFILE DE MARENGO. 339 

mule and the driver as a guide, we set off on foot 
across the plain, to the entrance of a kind of gorge, 
called the Defile de Marengo, which is exceedingly 
steep and difficult of ascent. A considerable 
stream, confined within narrow bounds, roars and 
foams within a few feet of the pathway, so that 
in wet weather its swollen waters must render the 
defile impassable. Among the rocks, wherever 
any particles of soil lodged, rich cushions of moss 
spread themselves, wild auriculas nestled in the 
crevices, and large patches of crowberry and black- 
berry bushes crept over the boulders. These 
blackberry bushes fringed the pathway up to within 
a short distance of the Hospice ; and nowhere in 
Scotland have we seen the fruit so plentiful or so 
large and luxurious. Basketfuls could be gathered 
in a few minutes without diverging more than a 
yard or two from our course ; and yet it seems 
never to be touched. The sides of the stream 
were decked with the large woolly leaves and 
brown flowers of the Alpine Tussilago, which takes 
the place at this elevation of the common butter- 
bur, whose enormous umbrella-like leaves form 
such a picturesque adornment of lowland rivulets. 
After an hour's stiff ascent, we came to two 
ruinous-looking chalets, built of loose stones, one 
of which served as a place of refuge for cattle, 
while the other was the old morgue, now used 
as a shelter-place for travellers, where they wait, 
if overtaken by storms, till the servants of the 
monastery come down with a dog to their rescue, 

Z 2 






340 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

which they do every morning when the weather 
is unusually severe. They bring with them on 
such occasions wine and provisions to restore the 
exhausted and half-frozen traveller ; and guided 
by the faithful dogs, who alone know the way, — 
thirty feet of snow being not unfrequently accu- 
mulated in the worst parts of the pass, — they are 
all brought safely to the hospitable shelter of the 
convent. From this point the defile receives the 
ominous name of the Valley of Death ; and the 
track is marked by tall black poles, and here and 
there by a cross, marking the scene of some tragic 
event. Within a short distance of the Hospice, 
an iron cross commemorates the death of one of 
the monks who perished on that spot by an ava- 
lanche in November 1845. Between these grim 
memorials of those to whom the place had been 
indeed the valley of the shadow of death we toiled 
up the rough and arduous path, panting and per- 
spiring, greatly aided by our alpenstocks. For 
my own part, I thought the way would never end. 
I turned corner after corner of the defile, but still 
no trace of human habitation. My knees were 
about to give way with fatigue, the rarity of the 
air was making itself known to me in thirst and 
headache, my pulse had advanced from 60 beats 
at Martigny to 83 at this elevation, and I would 
gladly have rested awhile. But the shades of 
night were falling fast, so the banner with the 
strange device had still to be unfurled. I had in 
my own experience during this ascent a more 



vi.] THE VALLEY OF DEATH. 341 

vivid conception than I could otherwise have 
realized of the feverish longing which the lost 
wanderer in the snow has for a place of refuge and 
rest. If I, a mere summer tourist, bent upon 
reaching the Hospice only to gratify a love of 
adventure, and to realize a romantic sensation, had 
such a desire, how much more ardent must be 
the longing of the poor traveller, overtaken by 
the dreadful tourmente, blinded and benumbed by 
the furious drift, to whom reaching the Hospice 
is a matter of life and death ! At last, at the very 
summit of the pass, I saw the Hospice looming 
above me, its windows glittering in the setting 
sun. Fatigue" and weariness all forgotten, I eagerly 
clambered up the remaining part of the ascent, 
along a paved road overhanging a precipice, and 
in a few minutes stood beside the open door. At 
first I could hardly realize the fact that the 
convent, about which I had read so much, which 
I had so often seen in pictures and pictured in 
dreams, was actually before me. It had a very 
familiar look, appearing exactly as I had imagined. 
I did not approach it in the orthodox fashion, — 
exhausted and half-frozen amid the blinding drifts 
of a snow-storm, and dragged in on a dog's back ! 
On the contrary, the evening was calm and 
summer-like ; the surrounding peaks retained the 
last crimson blush of the exquisitely beautiful 
abend-gliihen^ or after-glow of sunset ; the little 
lake beside the convent mirrored the building on 
its tranquil bosom ; the snow had retreated from 



342 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the low grounds, and only lingered on the lesser 
heights in the form of hardened patches wedged 
in the shady recesses of the rocks. I could not 
have seen the place under more favourable au- 
spices ; and yet, nevertheless, the scene was in- 
expressibly forlorn and melancholy.' There was 
an air of utter solitude and dreariness about it 
which I have never seen equalled, and which 
oppressed me with a nameless sadness. There was 
no colour in the landscape, — no cheerful green, 
or warm brown, or shining gold, such as relieves 
even the most sterile moorland scenery in this 
country. Everything was grey and cold — the 
building was grey, the rocks were grey, the lake 
was grey, the vegetation was grey, the sky was 
grey ; and when the evening glow vanished, the 
lofty peaks around assumed a livid ghastly hue, 
which even the sparkling of their snowy drapery 
in the first beams of the moon could not enliven. 
Not a tree, not a shrub, not even a heather bush, 
was in sight. It seemed as if Nature, in this re- 
mote and elevated region, were dead, and that I 
was gazing upon its shrouded corpse in a chamber 
draperied with the garments of woe. 

The Monastery itself is a remarkably plain build- 
ing, destitute of all architectural pretensions. It is 
in fact a huge barn, built entirely for use and not 
for elegance. It consists of two parts — one fitted 
up as a chapel, and the other containing the cells 
of the monks, and rooms for the accommodation of. 
travellers, divided from each other by whitewashed 



VI.] HOTEL BE ST LOUIS. 343 

wooden partitions. It is built in the strongest 
manner, — the walls being very thick, and the win- 
dows numerous, small, and doubly-glazed, so as 
most effectually to withstand the fearful storms of 
winter. There is a small separate building on the 
other side of the path, called the Hotel de St. 
Louis, which is used as a granary, and as a sleeping- 
place for beggars and tramps. It also provides a 
refuge in case of fire, from which the Hospice 
has frequently suffered severely, being on two 
occasions nearly burnt to the ground. Ladies 
were formerly entertained in this building, as it 
w T as deemed out of place to bring them into the 
Monastery. But these scruples have now been 
overcome, and ladies are freely admitted to all 
parts of the place, and allowed to sleep in the 
ordinary rooms. The monks of the present day 
have not the same dread of the fair sex which their 
patron saint is said to have cherished. Indeed, 
the good fathers are particularly delicate and 
profuse in their attentions to ladies, giving to 
them the best places at table, and serving them 
with the choicest viands. In fact, the company of 
ladies is one of the best letters of introduction 
that a party can bring with them ; for though 
the monks are proverbially kind and attentive to 
all persons without distinction, and especially 
considerate, from a sympathetic feeling, towards 
bachelors, yet if they have a warmer place than 
another in their hearts, it is reserved for lady 
travellers ; and who would blame them for it ? 



344 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 



The St. Bernard Hospice is the highest per- 
manent habitation in Europe, being 8200 feet 
above the level of the sea, or nearly twice the 
height of Ben Nevis. There are, indeed, several 
chalets in the Alps that are still higher, but 
they are tenanted only during the three summer 
months, when the people employ themselves in 
tending goats and manufacturing cheeses from 
their milk. About the end of September they 
are deserted, and the shepherds descend to the 
valleys. The severity of the climate at the Hos- 
pice is so great, that the snow never leaves the 
level ground for nine months in the year. Snow 
showers are almost always falling, even in the 
mildest weather; and there are scarcely three 
successive days in the whole twelve months free 
from blinding mists and biting sleet. The mean 
temperature is 30 Fahr., exactly that of the South 
Cape of Spitzbergen. In summer it never exceeds 
48 , even on the hottest day ; and in winter, 
particularly in February, the thermometer not 
unfrequently falls 40 below zero,— a degree of 
cold of which we in this country can form no 
conception. What greatly increases the severity 
of the climate is the fact that the Hospice is 
situated in a gorge pierced nearly from north- 
east to south-west, in the general direction of 
the Alps, and consequently in the course of the 
prevailing winds ; so that, even in the height of 
July, the least breath of the dzse, or north wind, 
sweeping over the lofty snow region, always brings 



VI.] SEVERITY OF CLIMATE. 345 

with it a degree of cold extremely uncomfortable. 
The effect of this bitter Arctic climate upon the 
monks, as might be expected, is extremely disas- 
trous. The strongest constitution soon gives way 
under it. Headaches, pains in the chest and liver, 
are sadly common. Even the dogs themselves, 
hardy though they are, soon become rheumatic 
and die. Seven years is the longest span of their 
life, and the breed is with the utmost difficulty 
kept up. All the monks are young men, none of 
them having the grey hair, and long venerable 
beard, and feeble stooping gait, which are usually 
associated with the monastic fraternity. In fact, 
the intensity of the climate prevents any one 
from reaching old age. The prior, M. Joseph de 
l'Eglise, has been longer in the convent than any 
other monk, having spent there considerably more 
than the half of his life. But though only forty- 
six years of age, he looked a withered, pinched old 
man, suffering constantly and acutely from the 
disorders of the place, yet bearing his illnesses 
in patient uncomplaining silence, and going about 
his work as though nothing were the matter with 
him. The monks begin their noviciate, which 
usually lasts about fourteen years, at the age of 
eighteen ; but few of them live to complete it. 
The first year of residence is the least trying, as 
the stock of health and energy they have brought 
with them enables them successfully to resist the 
devitalizing influence of the monotonous life and 
the severe climate ; but every succeeding year they 



346 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

become less and less able to bear the cold and 
privations, and they go about the convent the 
ghosts of their former selves, blue and thin and 
shivering. Before they have succumbed, they go 
down to the sick establishments in the milder 
climate of Martigny or Aosta, or the'y serve as 
parish priests in the different valleys around. But, 
in many cases, this remedy comes too late. They 
perish at their posts, literally starved to death. 
The annals of the convent contain many sad 
records of such devotion ; and they thrill the 
heart with sympathy and admiration. 

We mounted the stair in front of the door 
of the Hospice, and entered, preceded by our 
guide. In the wall of the Vestibule we noticed a 
large black marble tablet, bearing the following 
inscription in gilt letters : " Napoleoni I. Francorum 
Imperatori, semper augusto Reipublicae Valesianae 
restauratori, semper optimo ^Egyptiaco, bis Italico, 
semper invicto, in monte Jovis et Sempronii semper 
memorando respublica Valesiae grata, 2 Dec. 1804." 
At the top of a short flight of steps, our guide rang 
a large bell twice, and immediately a door opened 
and a polite and gentlemanly monk appeared, 
dressed in a long black coat with white facings, 
and with a high dark cap, similarly decorated, 
upon his head. He welcomed us with much polite- 
ness, and beckoning us to follow him, conducted 
us through a long vaulted corridor, dimly lighted 
by a solitary lamp, where the clang of an iron gate 
shutting behind us, and the sound of our own 






VI.] RECEPTION-ROOM. 347 

footsteps on the stone floor, produced a hollow 
reverberation. He brought us into a narrow room, 
with one deeply-recessed window at the end, con- 
taining three beds simply draped with dark crimson 
curtains, and all the materials for a comfortable 
toilet. There are about eighty beds for travellers 
of better condition in the monastery, and accom- 
modation for between two and three hundred 
persons of all classes at one time. Speedily re- 
moving our travel-stains, we rejoined our host in 
the corridor, who showed us into the general 
reception room, where we found lights and a 
smouldering wood fire upon the hearth. The 
walls of the room, lined with pine wainscot, were 
hung with engravings and paintings, the gifts of 
grateful travellers ; while in one corner was a 
piano, presented by the Prince of Wales shortly 
after his visit to the Hospice. Two long tables 
occupied the sides, covered with French newspapers 
and periodicals, among which we noticed several 
recent numbers of Galignani and the Illustrated 
London News. 

We went instinctively at once to the fire, but 
found it monopolized by a party of Italians and 
Germans, who showed no disposition to admit us 
within the magic circle. We elbowed our way in, 
however, and had the satisfaction of crouching 
over the smouldering logs with the rest, and admir- 
ing the beautifully -carved marble mantel -piece. 
One of the monks very considerately came in 
with an armful of wood and a pair of bellows, 



348 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

and, replenishing the fire, speedily produced a 
cheerful blaze, which thawed us all into good- 
humour and genial chattiness. We felt the cold 
exceedingly; the thermometer in one of the 
windows of the room registering six degrees below 
the freezing point. At Martigny, in the morning, 
the thermometer indicated about eighty degrees 
in the shade ; so that in less than twelve hours 
we had passed from a tropical heat sufficient to 
blister the skin exposed to it to an Arctic cold 
capable of benumbing it with frost-bites. The 
rooms of the convent are heated all the year 
round ; and at what an expense and trouble it 
may be judged, when the fact is mentioned, that 
every particle of the fuel consumed is brought on 
the backs of mules over the Col de Fenetre, a 
continuous ascent of nine thousand feet, from the 
convent forest in the valley of Ferret, twelve miles 
distant. Water, too, boils at this elevation at 
about 187 Fahr., or twenty-five degrees sooner 
than the normal point ; and in consequence of 
this it takes five hours to cook a piece of meat, 
which would have taken only three hours to get 
ready down in the valleys, and a most inordinate 
quantity of fuel is consumed in the kitchen during 
the process. The most essential element of life in 
this terrible climate is yet, sad to say, too rare and 
precious to be used in sufficient quantity. What 
would not the poor monks give for a roaring 
blazing coal fire, such as cheers in almost limitless 
measure our homes on the winter nights, when 



vi.] SUPPER. 349 

they sit shivering over the dim glimmer of a wood 
fire carefully doled out in ounces ! 

Having arrived too late for supper, which is 
usually served at six, the dinner hour being at 
noon, an impromptu meal was provided for us 
and the other travellers who were in the same 
position. Though hastily got up, the cooking of 
it would have done credit to the best hotel in 
Martigny. It consisted of excellent soup, roast 
chamois, and boiled rice and milk, with prunes. 
A bottle of very superior red wine, which was said 
to be a present from the King of Sardinia, was put 
beside each person ; and a small dessert of nuts 
and dried fruits wound up the entertainment. The 
Clavandier presided, and by his courteous man- 
ners made every one feel perfectly at home. The 
conversation was carried on exclusively in French, 
which is the only language spoken by the fathers. 
Coming in contact during the summer months with 
travellers from all parts of the world, and devoting 
the long winter to hard study, in which they are 
helped by the superior, who is a man of great 
learning, the monks are exceedingly intelligent, 
and well acquainted with the leading events of 
the day, in which they take a deep interest. Some 
of them are proficients in music ; others display 
a taste for natural history ; and they all combine 
various accomplishments with their special study 
of theology and the patristic literature. They are 
also very liberal in their views, having none of the 
bigotry and intolerance which we usually associate 



350 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS, [chap. 

with the monastic order, and which is so con- 
spicuous in the cures of the Papal Swiss cantons. 
A striking example of this was related to us at the 
time. A week before our arrival, an Episcopalian 
clergyman, happening to be staying with a party 
of Englishmen in the Hospice on a Sunday, asked 
permission of the superior to conduct a religious 
service with his countrymen in the refectory. This 
was not only granted with the utmost cordiality, 
but the chapel itself was offered to him for the 
purpose, which offer, however, he declined in the 
same spirit in which it was made, unwilling to 
trespass to that extent upon their catholicity. 

Conversing pleasantly on various subjects with 
our host and the guests around, we did ample 
justice to the good cheer. Fridays and Saturdays, 
we understood, were fast days ; but though the 
brethren fasted, no restriction was put during those 
days upon the diet of travellers — the table being 
always simply but amply furnished. The task of 
purveying for the Hospice, which falls to the 
Clavandier, is by no means an easy one, when it 
is considered that upwards of sixteen thousand 
travellers, with appetites greatly sharpened by the 
keen air, are entertained every year; and not a 
single scrap of anything that can be eaten grows 
on the St. Bernard itself. All the provisions, which 
must consist of articles that will keep, are brought 
from Aosta, and stored in the magazines of the 
convent. During the months of June, July, and 
August, when the paths are open, about twenty 



VI.] PROVISIONS OF HOSPICE. 351 

horses and mules are employed every day in carry- 
ing in food and fuel for the long winter. The 
country people also bring up gifts of cheese, butter, 
and potatoes, in gratitude for the kind services of 
the monks. Several cows are kept in the convent 
pastures on the Italian side, and their milk affords 
a grateful addition to the food of the monks. 
During winter they have no fresh meat at all, 
being obliged to subsist upon salt beef and mutton, 
usually killed and preserved in September ; and 
what is still worse, they have no vegetables, all 
attempts at gardening in the place having proved 
abortive ; so that not unfrequently scurvy is added 
to their sufferings. 

After an hour or two's chat around the fire, 
and a very cursory but most interesting inspec- 
tion of the pile of visitors' books, which contain 
many celebrated names, and a great deal that 
is curious and admirable in the way of comment 
upon the place, our host bade us all good-night, 
and I too was very glad to retire. A bright moon 
shone in through the curtainless window of my 
bedroom, and lay in bars on the bare floor. Out- 
side the view was most romantic, the moonshine 
investing everything, snowy peaks, jagged rocks, 
and tjie bare terraces around, with lights and 
shadows of the strangest kind. A pale blue sky, 
spiritual almost in its purity and transparency, 
in which the stars glimmered with a cold clear 
splendour, bent over the wild spot ; and the lone- 
liness and silence that reigned in the " unsyllabled 



352 HO LI DA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

air " were unlike in their depth and utterness any- 
thing I had ever before experienced. Snatching, like 
Gray's schoolboy, a few minutes of fearful joy from 
the contemplation of the weird scene, worn-out 
nature summoned me to bed. There was a perfect 
pile of blankets and a heavy down quilt above me, 
under which I lay squeezed like a cheese in a 
cheese-press, but I utterly failed to get warm. 
Sleep would not be wooed. I lay and watched 
the shadows on the floor, and thought of many 
unutterable things, and wondered at the strange 
vicissitudes of life, which so often place us unex- 
pectedly in situations that were the ideals of our 
youth. About five o'clock in the morning, just 
as the grey dawn was stealing in, I was thoroughly 
roused from a dozing, semi-torpid state, into which 
I had sunk, by the ringing of the convent bell for 
matins ; and shortly afterwards the rich tones of 
an organ, mellowed by the distance, pealed from 
the chapel with an indescribably romantic effect. 
I arose and dressed with chattering teeth, and then 
went out into the raw air. I walked beside the 
small, desolate-looking lake beside the Hospice, 
where never fish leaped up, and on which no boat 
has ever "sailed. Being the highest sheet of water 
in Europe, fed by the melting of the snows, it is 
frequently frozen all the summer ; and when thawed, 
it lies " like a spot of ink amid the snow." Passing 
a pillar at the end of the lake, and a curious 
heraldic stone beside a spring, I had crossed the 
boundary between Switzerland and Piedmont, and 



VI.] WALK BESIDE LAKE. 353 

was now in Italy. Climbing up the bare rocks to 
a kind of esplanade, near a tall cross inserted in a 
massive pedestal of chlorite-schist, and bearing the 
inscription " Deo Optimo Maximo," which guides 
the traveller from the Italian side of the pass to 
the convent, I sat down and surveyed the scene. 
The snowy dome of Mont Velan filled up the 
western horizon. On my left the gorge was shut 
in by the rugged range of Mont Mort, Mont Che- 
naletta, and the Pic de Dronaz. Below me I could 
see, through the writhing mist, glimpses of the 
green corrie, called " La Vacherie," where the cattle 
of the Hospice grazed under the care of a few 
peasants, whose wretched chalets were the only 
habitations : while beyond, to the southward, rose 
up a strange Sinai-like group of reddish serrated 
rocks, entirely destitute of vegetation, with wreaths 
of dark cloud floating across their faces, or clinging 
to their ledges, and greatly increasing their savage 
gloom. An air of utter desolation and loneliness 
pervaded the whole scene. No sounds broke the 
stillness, save such as were wonderfully congenial 
with the spirit of the place, the sighing of the wind 
as it ruffled the surface of the lake, the occasional 
tinkle of the cow-bells far below, the deep baying 
of the St. Bernard dogs, or the murmur of a tor- 
rent far off, that came faint and continuous as 
music heard in ocean shells. 

I had ample evidence around — if my dripping 
nose and icy hands did not convince me — of 
the extreme severity of the climate. The vege- 

A a 



354 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

tation was exclusively hyperborean, exactly simi- 
lar in type to that which flourishes around the 
grim shores of Baffin's Bay. I had gathered the 
same species on the summits of the highest Scot- 
tish mountains, and afterwards on the Dovre- 
fjeld in Norway. The reindeer moss of Lap- 
land whitened the ground here and there, in- 
terspersed with a sulphur-coloured lichen which 
grows sparingly on the tops of the Cairngorm 
range. Large patches of black Tripe de Roche— 
the lichen which Sir John Franklin and his party, 
in the polar regions, were once, in the absence of 
all other food, compelled to eat, along with the 
remains of their old shoes and leather belts — clung 
to the stones, looking like fragments of charred 
parchment ; while an immense quantity of other 
well-known Arctic lichens and mosses covered the 
level surface of each exposed rock, as with a crisp 
shaggy mantle, that crunched under the foot. 
There were no tufts of grass, no green thing 
whatever. Tiny grey saxifrages, covered with 
white flowers, grew in thick clumps, as if crowd- 
ing together for warmth, along with brilliant little 
patches of gentian, whose depth and tenderness 
of blue were indescribable, and tufts of Aretias 
and Silenes, starred with a profusion of the most 
exquisite rosy flowers, as though the crimson glow 
of sunset had settled permanently upon them. 
The Alpine Forget-me-not, only found in this 
country on the summits of the Breadalbane moun- 
tains, cheered me with its bright blue eyes every- 



VI.] FLORA OF THE PASS. 355 

where ; while the " Alpine lady's mantle " spread 
its grey satiny leaves, along with the Arctic willow, 
the favourite food of the chamois, over the stony 
knolls, as if in pity for their nakedness. I found 
a few specimens of the beautiful lilac Soldanella 
aipina, and also several tufts of the glacier Ranun- 
culus, on a kind of moraine at the foot of a 
hardened snow-wreath. The Ranunculus was higher 
up, and grew on the loose debris, without a par- 
ticle of verdure around it. It seemed like the 
last effort of expiring nature to fringe the limit 
of eternal snow with life. Its foliage and flowers 
had a peculiarly wan and woe-begone look. Its 
appeal was so sorrowful, as it looked up at me, 
with its bleached colourless petals, faintly tinged 
with a hectic flush, that I could not help sym- 
pathizing with it, as though it were a sensitive 
creature. But the flower that touched me most 
was our own beloved " Scottish blue-bell." I was 
surprised and delighted beyond measure to see 
it hanging its rich peal of bells in myriads from 
the crevices of the rocks around, swaying with 
every breeze. It tolled in fairy tones the music 
of " Home, sweet home." It was like meeting 
a friend in a far country. It was the old familiar 
blue-bell, but it was changed in some respects. 
Its blossom was far larger, and of a deep purple 
tinge, instead of the clear pale blue colour which 
it has in this country 1 . It afforded a striking 

1 I may remark that the plant growing on the St. Bernard is 
known among continental botanists as Campanula Scheachzeri, and 

A a % 



356 HO LI DA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

example of the changes which the same plant 
undergoes when placed in different circumstances. 
I could see in its altered features modifications to 
suit a higher altitude and a severer climate. In 
the Alps all the plants have blossoms remarkably- 
large in proportion to their foliage, and their 
colours are unusually intensified, in order that 
they may get all the advantage of the brief but 
ardent sunshine, so as to ripen their seed as rapidly 
as possible. And this unprincipled little blue-bell 
in the vicinity of the Monastery had exchanged 
the clear blue of the Scottish Covenanter for the 
purple and fine linen of the Romish hierarchy, 
and was just like many others, animals as well 
as plants, doing in Rome as they do in Rome ! 
In this desolate, nature-forsaken spot, where an 
eternal winter reigns, the presence of these beau- 
tiful Alpine flowers, doing their best to make the 
place cheery, brought a peculiar indescribable feel- 
ing of spring to my heart, reminded me irresistibly 
of the season which is so sad amid all its beauty 
and promise — the first trembling out of the dark 
— the first thrill of life that comes to the waiting 
earth — and then the first timid peering forth of 

is regarded as a different species from our common blue-bell C. ro- 
tundifolia. But I am inclined to look upon it as a mere modified 
variety. The C. rotundifolia occurs in great abundance at Liddes, 
at a height of 5000 feet, and even there is somewhat different from 
the Scotch variety. In Norway I have traced it up the mountain 
sides, gradually changing its form and colour, until at the highest 
elevations it presented an appearance not unlike that of the St. Ber- 
nard plant. 



VI.] HISTORY OF THE PASS, 357 

green on hedge and bank ; and, like Coleridge's 
" Ancient Mariner," I said : 

" Oh, happy living things ! no tongue 
Their beauty might declare ; 
A spring of love gushed from my heart, 
And I blessed them unaware/' 



It is impossible to gaze on the St. Bernard pass 
without feelings of the deepest interest. It stands 
as a link in the chain that connects ancient and 
modern history — departed dynasties and systems 
of religions with modern governments and fresh 
creeds ; and in this part the continuity has never 
been broken. Bare and bleak as is the spot, it is 
a palimpsest crowded with relics of different epochs 
and civilizations, the one covering but not oblite- 
rating the other. Every step you take you set 
your foot upon " some reverend history." Thought, 
like the electric spark, rapidly traverses the thou- 
sand historical links of the chain of memory. 
You feel as if in the crowded valley in the vision 
of Mirza. All the nations of the earth — Druids, 
Celts, Romans, Saracens, French, Italians — seem 
to pass in solemn file, a dim and ghostly band, 
before your fancy's eye. Names that have left 
an imperishable wake behind them — Caesar, Char- 
lemagne, Canute, Francis I., Napoleon Buonaparte 
— have traversed that pass. Europe, Africa, and 
Asia have poured their wild hordes through that 
narrow defile. The spot on which the convent 
is erected was held sacred and oracular from time 



358 HO LID A YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

immemorial. Like the Tarpeian rock and the site 
of ancient Rome like the stern solitudes of Sinai 
and Horeb, it had a religio loci and a consecrated 
shrine from the remotest antiquity. The weird, 
wild aspect of the place gave it an air of terror, 
and naturally associated it with the presence of 
some mysterious supernatural being. On a little 
piece of level ground near the lake, called the 
Place de Jupiter, on which the ruinous founda- 
tions of an ancient Roman temple may still be 
seen, a rude altar, built of rough blocks of stone, 
was erected three thousand years ago, and sacri- 
fices offered on it to Pen, the god of the moun- 
tains, from whom the whole great central chain 
of Switzerland received the name of Pennine Alps. 
The custom of building cairns on the highest 
points of our own hills is supposed to have been 
derived from the worship of this divinity, which 
seems at one time to have spread over the whole 
of Europe. The names of many of the Highland 
mountains bear significant traces of it. Ben Nevis 
means " Hill of Heaven," and Ben Ledi signifies 
" Hill of God," having near the summit some large 
upright stones, which in all probability formed 
a shrine of the god Pen, whose Gaelic equivalent, 
Beinn or Ben, has been bestowed on every 
conspicuous summit. Who the primitive people 
were that first erected the rude altars on the 
St. Bernard pass to their tutelary deity, we know 
not. They may have been allied to those strange 
Lacustrines who studded the lakes of Switzerland 






vi.] ROMAN INVASION, 359 

and Italy with their groups of dwellings, at the 
time that Abraham was journeying to Canaan, 
and whose relics, recently discovered, are exciting 
so much interest among archaeologists. They were 
no doubt Celtic tribes ; but, as Niebuhr says, 
" the narrow limits of history embrace only the 
period of their decline as a nation." The few 
fragments that are left of their language, like the 
waves of the ancient ocean, have a mysterious 
murmur of their own, which we can never clearly 
understand. 

For hundreds of years this unknown people 
worshipped their god, and held possession of their 
territories undisturbed ; but the day came when 
they were compelled to yield to a foreign invader, 
who fabricated his weapons of iron, and wielded 
them with a stronger arm. Rome had established 
a universal supremacy, and sent its conquering 
legions over the whole of Europe. The stupendous 
barrier of the Alps offered no obstruction. Through 
its passes and valleys, led on by Caesar Augustus 
in person, they poured like an irresistible torrent, 
washing away all traces of the former peoples. 
They demolished the old Druidic altar on the 
summit of the St. Bernard, and erected on its site 
a temple dedicated to Jupiter Penninus, while the 
whole range was called Mons Jovis, a name, under 
the corrupt form of Mont Joux, which it retained 
until comparatively recent times. After this the 
pass became one of the principal highways from 
Rome to the rich and fertile territories beyond 



360 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

the Alps. A substantial Roman road, well paved, 
was constructed with infinite pains and skill over 
the mountain, the remains of which may still be 
seen near the plain of Jupiter. It was used for 
centuries ; and Roman consul and private soldier 
alike paused at the simple shrine of Jupiter Pen- 
ninus, and left their offerings there, in gratitude 
for the protection afforded them. A large number 
of Roman coins, bronze medals, and fragments of 
votive brass tablets has been found on this spot, 
and are now deposited in the small museum of the 
convent adjoining the refectory. In the fifth cen- 
tury, the barbarian hordes of Goths under Alaric, 
of Huns under Attila, and of Vandals under Gen- 
seric, swept over the pass to subdue Italy and 
take possession of Rome. From that time, no 
event of importance, with the exception of the 
passage of the Lombards in 547, occurred in con- 
nexion with this spot, until Bernhard, who is sup- 
posed by some to have given his name to the 
pass, uncle of Charlemagne, marched a large army 
over it in 773, in his famous expedition against 
Astolphus, the last Lombard sovereign but one. 
Charlemagne himself afterwards recrossed it at the 
head of his victorious troops, after conquering 
Didier, the last sovereign of Upper Italy. Then 
came Bernard de Menthon, in the year 962, and, 
abolishing the last remains of Pagan worship, 
founded the Hospice which has received his name, 
and erected the first Christian altar. After this 
period, as Mr. King, in his delightful book, " The 



VI.] HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS. 361 

Italian Valleys of the Alps," informs us, the Sara- 
cens ravaged the convent, and destroyed its records 
by fire, and were in turn attacked and repulsed by 
the Normans. Humbert " the white-handed " led 
over the pass an army in 1034, to join Conrad in 
the conquest of Burgundy ; and a part of the army 
of Frederic Barbarossa crossed in n 66, under the 
command of Berthold . de Zahringen. " Pilgrims 
bound to Rome frequented it, travelling in large 
caravans for mutual protection from the brigands 
who infested it after the Saracen invasion ; and we 
find our own King Canute, himself a pilgrim to the 
tomb of St. Peter, by his representations to the 
Pope and the Emperor Adolphus on behalf of his 
English pilgrim subjects, obtaining the extirpation 
of those lawless bands, and the free and safe use of 
the pass." The present building was erected about 
the year 1680, its predecessor having been burnt to 
the ground. It is impossible to enumerate within 
our narrow limits all the remarkable historical 
events which are connected with this place, from 
the February of the year 59, when Caecina, the 
Roman general, marched over it with the cohorts 
recalled from Britain, through a snow-storm in 
February, to the spring of the year 1800, when 
Napoleon crossed it with an army of 80,000 men 
and 58 field-pieces on his way to the famous battle- 
field of Marengo. There are few spots in the 
world that have witnessed so many changes and 
revolutions, few spots which have been trodden by 
so many human feet ; and I do not envy the man 



362 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap- 

who can gaze upon the narrow path that skirts the 
lake from the Hospice calm and unmoved, when 
he thinks of the myriads of his fellow-creatures, 
from the greatest names in all history down to the 
lowest and most obscure, who, age after age, have 
disturbed the stern silence of these rocks, and who 
have now all alike gone down into undistinguishable 
du,st. Methinks the history of this little footpath 
is a commentary upon the vanity of human pride, 
more impressive than all that poetry has ever sung 
or philosophy taught. 

A little way beyond the Hospice, on a slightly 
rising ground, is a low building of one storey, built 
in the rudest manner, and with the roughest mate- 
rials. It is covered with a grey-slated roof ; and in 
the wall of the gable which fronts you there is a 
narrow iron grating, through which the light shines 
into the interior. You look in, and never till your 
dying day will you forget the ghastly spectacle 
that then meets your eye. It haunted me like a 
dreadful nightmare long afterwards. This is the 
famous Morgue, or dead-house, of which all the 
world has heard, and which every one visiting the 
convent, whose nerves are sufficiently strong, makes 
a special point of seeing. I could almost have 
wished, however, that my curiosity had been less 
keen ; for it is not pleasant to hang up in the 
gallery of one's memory a picture like that. And 
yet it does one good to see it. It softens the heart 
with pity ; it conveys, in a more solemn form than 
we are accustomed to read it, the lesson of mortality ; 



vi.] THE MORGUE. 363 

and it gives us a better idea than we could other- 
wise have formed of the dangers and sufferings 
which have often to be encountered in the winter 
passage of these mountains, and the noble work 
which the monks of St. Bernard perform. It was 
indeed a Golgotha, forcibly reminding me of Eze- 
kiel's vision of the valley of dry bones. Skulls, 
ribs, vertebrae, and other fragments of humanity, 
with the flesh long ago wasted away from them, 
blanched by sun and frost, lay here and there in 
heaps on the floor. As my eye got accustomed to 
the obscurity of the place, I noticed beyond this 
mass of miscellaneous bones, separated by a low 
wall which did not obstruct the view, an extraordi- 
nary group of figures. These were the bodies 
found entire of those who had perished in the 
winters' snow-storms. Some were lying prostrate, 
others were leaning against the rough wall, the dim, 
uncertain light imparting to their faces a strange 
and awful expression of life. Three figures espe- 
cially attracted and riveted my attention. In the 
right-hand corner there was a tall spectre fixed in 
an upright attitude, with its skeleton arms out- 
stretched, as if supplicating for the aid that never 
came, and its eyeless sockets glaring as if with 
a fearful expression. For years it had stood 
thus without any perceptible change. In another 
corner there was a figure kneeling upon the 
floor, muffled in a thick dark cloak, with a blue 
worsted cuff on the left wrist. No statue of the 
Laocoon ever told its tale of suffering more elo- 



364 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

quently than did that shrivelled corpse. He was 
an honest and industrious workman, a native of 
Martigny. He set out early one December morn- 
ing from that town, intending to go over into Italy 
in search of employment. He got safely and com- 
fortably as far as the Cantine de Proz, where he 
halted all night. Next morning he set out through 
the defile leading up to the Hospice. The weather 
was at first favourable, but he had not proceeded 
far when dark clouds speedily covered the sky from 
end to end, and the fearful gnxen^ which always 
rages most violently in the alpine passes, broke 
out in all its fury. He had doubtless fought against 
it with all his energy, but in vain. He was found 
not three hundred yards from the convent door, 
buried among the deep snow, frozen in the attitude 
in which he now appears, with his knees bent, and 
his head thrown back in hopeless exhaustion and 
despair. But the saddest of all the sad sights of 
the Morgue is the corpse of a woman lying huddled 
up at the foot of the last-mentioned figure, dressed 
in dark rags. In her arms she holds a bundle, 
which you are told is a baby ; and her withered 
face bends over it with a fond expression which 
death and decay have not been able to obliterate. 
The light shines full on her quiet features, which 
are no more ruffled by earthly pain. You cannot 
fail to see that she had made every effort to pre- 
serve the life of the baby to the last moment, for 
most of her own scanty clothing is drawn up and 
wrapt round its tiny form, leaving her own limbs 



VI.] DEAD MOTHER AND CHILD. 365 

exposed to the blast. Oh, sacred mystery of 
mother's love, stronger than pain, more enduring 
than death ! But, alas ! in vain was its self-sacri- 
ficing tenderness here. The weary feet could no 
longer bear the precious burden over the wild, 
and sinking in the fatal sleep, the snow drifted over 
them, fold by fold, silent and swift, and the place 
that knew them once knew them no more for ever : 
the wind passed over it, and it was gone. They 
found the hapless pair in the following spring, when 
the snows had melted away ; and they bore them 
tenderly and sadly to this last resting-place. No 
one came to claim them. Where, the poor woman 
came from, what was her name, no one ever knew ; 
and in this heart-touching pathos of mystery and 
death she awaits the coming of that other and 
brighter spring that shall melt even the chill of 
the tomb. 

It is indeed a strange place that Morgue! All 
its ghastly tenants perished in the same dreadful 
way, — the victims of the storm-fiend. Side by side 
they repose, so cold, so lonely, so forsaken ; with 
no earth to cover them ; no token of love from 
those who were nearest and dearest ; no flower to 
bloom over their dust ; not even one green blade of 
grass to draw down the sunshine and the dew of 
heaven to their dark charnel-house. Traveller after 
traveller from the ends of the earth comes and 
looks in with shuddering dread through the grating 
on the pitiable sight, and then goes away, perhaps 
a sadder and a wiser man. For my own part I 



366 HOLIDA YS ON HIGH LANDS. [CHAP. 

could not resist the tender impulse, which moved 
me to gather a small nosegay of gentians and blue- 
bells, and throw it in, as an offering of pity, to the 
poor deserted and forgotten dead. It is impossible 
to dig a grave in this spot, for the hard rock comes 
everywhere to the surface, and but the thinnest 
sprinkling of mould rests upon it, hardly sufficient 
to. maintain the scanty vegetation. This sterile 
region refuses even a grave to those who die there ! 
So cold and dry is the air, that the corpses in the 
Morgue do not decompose in the same way that 
they do at lower elevations. They wither and 
collapse into mummies, embalmed in the air, like 
the dried bodies preserved in the catacombs of 
Palermo, — and for years they undergo no change, 
— at last falling to pieces, and strewing the ground 
with their fragments. Within the last twelve years 
no less than sixteen persons have perished in the 
snow. Some seven or eight years ago, two of the 
monks went out with a couple of servants to search 
for a man who was supposed to have lost himself 
in the mountains. They were scarcely fifty paces 
away from the Hospice, when an immense ava- 
lanche fell from the side of Mont Chenaletta, and 
buried the whole party under eighteen feet of snow. 
The dreadful catastrophe was seen from the convent 
door, but the monks were utterly powerless to render 
help. When rescued, the party were all dead. 
The number of accidents on the St. Bernard pass 
has greatly diminished of late years ; and now the 
services of the . monks in winter are principally 



VI.] ST. BERNARD DOGS. 367 

required to nurse poor travellers exhausted by the 
difficulties of the ascent, or who have been frost- 
bitten. Returning from my morning walk, I saw 
the famous marons, or St. Bernard dogs, playing 
about the convent door. There were five of them, 
massively built creatures, of a brown colour, — very 
like Newfoundland dogs, only larger and more 
powerful. The stock is supposed to have come 
originally from the Pyrenees. The services they 
have rendered in rescuing travellers are incalculable. 
A whole book might easily be filled with interest- 
ing adventures of which they were the heroes. In 
the Museum at Berne I saw the stuffed body of 
the well-known dog " Barry," which is said to have 
saved the lives of no less than forty persons. The 
huge creatures were fond of being caressed ; and 
one of them ran after my companion, as he was 
going up the hill-side by a wrong path, and pulled 
him back by the coat-tail ! 

After a substantial breakfast, we paid a visit to 
the chapel to deposit our alms in the alms-box, 
for though the monks make no charge for their 
hospitality, or even give the least hint of a dona- 
tion, there is a box placed in the chapel for the 
benefit of the poor, and to this fund every traveller 
should contribute, at the very least, what the 
same accommodation would have cost him at an 
hotel. It is to be feared, however, that the great 
majority contribute nothing at all. Not one of 
the company who supped and breakfasted with 
us approached the chapel, having skulked away 



368 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

as soon as they could decently take leave; and 
yet they were bedizened with gold chains and 
jewellery of a costly description. There was one 
Scotchman present who carried out his sound 
Protestant principles at the expense of the poor 
monks. He was a very thin, wiry man, but he 
ate an enormous supper and breakfast. He drank 
a. bottle of wine at each meal, and helped himself 
most largely to everything on the table. He took 
what would have sufficed for four ordinary men, 
and, to our intense disgust, he rubbed down his 
stomach complacently in the morning ere depart- 
ing, and said, in the hearing of all, that he had 
made up his mind to put nothing into the alms- 
box, lest he should countenance Popery! The 
expenses of the establishment are very heavy, 
while the funds to meet them have been decreas- 
ing. Formerly the convent was the richest in 
Europe, possessing no less than eighty benefices. 
But Charles Emmanuel III. of Sardinia, falling 
into a dispute with the Cantons of Switzerland 
about the nomination of a provost, sequestrated 
the possessions of the monks, leaving them only 
a small estate in the Valais and in the Canton 
de Vaud. The French and Italian governments 
give an annual subsidy of a thousand pounds, 
while another thousand is raised by the gifts of 
travellers, and by collections made in Switzerland, 
— Protestants contributing as freely as Roman 
Catholics. Notwithstanding their comparative 
poverty, however, the monks are still as lavish 



vi.] HOSPICE CHAPEL. 369 

and hospitable as ever, up to their utmost means. 
As it was the feast of the Assumption of the 
Virgin, crowds of beggars and tramps from the 
neighbouring valleys, — masses of human degrada- 
tion and deformity of the most disgusting cha- 
racter, — were congregated about the kitchen door, 
clamorous for alms, while the monks were busy 
serving them with bread, cold meat, and wine. 
What they could not eat they carried away in 
baskets which they had brought for the purpose. 
Entering the chapel with our little offering, we 
were greatly struck with its magnificence, as con- 
trasted with the excessive plainness of the outside, 
and the sterility of the spot. It is considered a 
very sacred place, for it contains the relics of no 
less than three famous saints, viz. St. Bernard, St. 
Hyrenaeus, and St. Maurice, of the celebrated 
Theban legion of Christians. Five massive gilt 
altars stood in various parts of the chapel, while 
the walls were adorned with frescoes and several 
fine paintings and statues. The marble tomb of 
Desaix, representing him in relief, wounded and 
sinking from his horse into the arms of his aide, 
Le Brun, was a conspicuous object. " I will give 
you the Alps for your monument," said Napoleon, 
with tears in his eyes to his dying friend : " you 
shall rest on their loftiest inhabited point." The 
body of the general was carefully embalmed at 
Milan, and afterwards conveyed to the chapel 
where it now reposes. A crowd of peasants, men 
and women, were kneeling, during our visit, in the 

Bb 



370 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

body of the church, performing their devotions ; 
while three or four monks, dressed in splendid 
habiliments of crimson and gold, were chanting 
" the solemn melodies of a Gregorian mass," ac- 
companied by the rich tones of a magnificent 
organ ; and clouds of fragrant incense rose slowly 
to the roof. 

Anxious to see the geographical bearings of the 
convent, we climbed up, with immense expenditure 
of breath and perspiration, a lofty precipitous peak 
close at hand. We had a most glorious view from 
the top, for the atmosphere was perfectly clear, 
and the remotest distances plainly visible. In 
front was "le Mont Blanc," as the inhabitants 
proudly call it, and at this distance of fifteen miles 
in a straight line it looked infinitely higher and 
grander than when seen from the nearer and more 
commonly visited points of view at Chamouni. 
Far up, miles seemingly, in the deep blue sky, 
rose the dazzling whiteness of its summit, com- 
pletely dwarfing all the other peaks around it. 
On our left was the enormously vast group of 
Monte Rosa, its everlasting snows tinged with 
the most delicate crimson hues of the rising sun ; 
while between them the stupendous obelisk of the 
Matterhorn, by far the sharpest and sublimest of 
the peaks of Europe, stormed the sky, with a 
long grey cloud flying at its summit like a flag 
of defiance. Around these three giant mountains 
crowded a bewildering host of other summits, most 
of them above 13000 feet high, with enormous 



VI.] MONT CHENALETTA. 371 

glaciers streaming down their sides, and forming 
the sources of nearly all the great rivers of the 
Continent. My eye and soul turned away from 
this awful white realm of death, with relief, 
to the brown and green mountains of Italy, which 
just peered timidly, as it were, above that fearful 
horizon in the far south, with an indescribably soft, 
warm sky brooding over them, as if in sympathy. 
That little strip of mellow sky and naturally- 
coloured earth was the only bond in all the wide 
view that united me to the cosy, lowly world of 
my fellow-creatures. 

On this hill, composed of very friable schistose 
rock, I gathered a considerable number of very 
interesting plants peculiar to the Alps. The Ar- 
nica montana displayed its large yellow composite 
flowers in the shady recesses of the rocks ; and, 
as if to illustrate the proverb that the antidote is 
ever beside the evil, I found its juicy stems very 
serviceable in healing a bruise on the leg which 
I got from a falling stone when gathering speci- 
mens. Another composite plant, the Chrysan- 
themum alpinmn^ whitened in thousands the slopes 
of debris. It has been observed, with Phyteuma 
pauciflora^ beside the Lys glacier on Monte Rosa, 
at 1 1352 feet. Nothing could exceed the beauty 
and luxuriance of the patches of Linaria alpina, 
covered with a profusion of orange and purple 
labiate blossoms, which spread everywhere over the 
loose soil. No less striking were the sheets of 
forget-me-not-like flowers, blue as the sky itself, 

B b 2 



372 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS. [chap. 

produced by the Eritrichium nanum^ growing in 
the moist sunny fissures. At the base of the hill 
on the Italian side, where there was a slight tinge 
of grassy verdure, the yellow Star of Bethlehem 
(Ornithogalum fistidosiwi) and the Alpine Orchis 
(Nigritella angustifolid)^ the Mannertreu or Kamm- 
bhtme of the natives, struggled into existence. 
The former rises an inch or two above the soil, 
and produces two or three brilliantly-yellow flowers 
on each stem ; while the compact showy heads 
of deep blackish crimson flowers of the latter, 
springing from very short and very narrow leaves, 
diffuse a fine vanilla -like fragrance. At lower 
elevations they grow in great profusion, and form 
the finest ornaments of the Alpine pastures. 
Among the saxifrages which I observed growing 
more or less plentifully were the .S. androsacea 
(of which I could get no specimen perfect, for the 
marmot is so fond of it that it nibbles its stems, 
leaves, and flowers all round), the .S. bryoides, 
Aizoon, biflora, ccesia, and muscoides. A short 
distance below the summit there were several large 
snow-wreaths. Their perpetual drip nourished a 
glowing little colony of the unrivalled Gentiana 
Bavarica^ and the compact sheets of the Androsace 
glacialiS) sprinkled over with bright pink solitary 
flowers. In one place there was a curious natural 
conservatory. The under surface of the snow 
having been melted by the warmth of the soil — 
which in Alpine regions is always markedly higher 
than that of the air — was not in contact with it. 



VI 



.] ALPINE FLORA AND FAUNA. 373 



A snowy vault was thus formed, glazed on the 
top with thin plates of transparent ice ; and here 
grew a most lovely cushion of the Aretia Hel- 
vetica^ covered with hundreds of its delicate rosy 
flowers, like a miniature Hydrangea blossom. The 
dark colour of the soil favoured the absorption of 
heat ; and, prisoned in its crystal cave, this little 
fairy grew and blossomed securely from the very 
heart of winter, — the unfavourable circumstances 
around all seeming so many ministers of good, 
increasing its strength and enhancing its loveliness. 
Owing to the high temperature of the soil in the 
Alps, plants are enabled to thrive at great alti- 
tudes ; and even animal life is not unfrequent at 
a height of ioooo feet. I observed at the foot of 
the snow-wreaths on this hill numerous burrows of 
a kind of mouse called Arvicola nivalis \ which is 
also found on the top of the Faulhorn, Rothhorn, 
and on the Grands Mulets. Under the stones on 
the surface of the snow were lively masses of the 
small, black glacier flea (Desoria glacialis) ; while 
several specimens of that magnificent butterfly, 
the Pamassius Apollo, distinguished by its white 
almost transparent wings, marked with scarlet and 
black-ringed ocelli, sailed past with astonishing 
swiftness in the bright sunshine. These were very 
satisfactory representatives of the rich animal 
world we had left behind in the valleys. After 
a reasonable time spent in the enjoyment of all 
these treasures, we turned to depart. Hurriedly 
descending, with many a picturesque tumble and 



374 HO LID A YS ON HIGH LANDS, 

glissade, which did not improve the continuity 
of our clothing, we reached the foot of the hill 
in safety. Shortly afterwards we bade adieu to 
our hospitable entertainers with mingled feelings 
of gratification and regret : gratification, because 
we had seen so much that was new and interesting 
to us, and had been so kindly treated, though 
strangers in a strange land ; and regret, because 
the palmiest days of the Hospice are over, for the 
great majority of tourists will now take advantage 
of the Mont Cenis Tunnel and proceed to Italy 
by the most direct route, and only a few will care 
to turn aside, on a long and somewhat difficult 
journey, to visit the spot. 



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